Originally Posted by
GUWonder
There was quite a bit of cabin baggage taken off the plane by evacuating passengers, including bags of duty free alcohol bottles that were quite obviously fully in tact. Some of the excuses given for doing that was that the cabin baggage had their passport and money in it. Others that it had medication. I am sure there is a lot of truth in that, but I doubt it or broken bins explain all of the cabin baggage that made it off that flight in the hands of passengers.
I agree. We can rationalize it all we want, and I am sure that in some cases, these rationalizations hold true, but I put a lot of it down to a combination of factors:
1) shock - you are getting off a plane, you take your things with you - something of an automatic response.
2) lack of knowledge - flyertalkers are experienced flyers. We know that seconds count in evacuating from a plane. Does a 16 year old on her first flight know the same?
3) muddled thinking - my life is in that bag - phone, laptop, passport, money? How can I live without that?
Unless, it is drilled into people that time is of the absolute essence and that they
must leave everything behind, human nature is going to result in people doing things that they shouldn't. People run back into burning buildings all the time, not to rescue their children, or even their pet, but to save some of the most inconsequential things. This is the same behavior.
The problem is that they are risking far more lives than their own.