Originally Posted by
110pgl
Yes I can.
I cite every single survivable crash in which there is not one instance of bags damaging slides and not one instance of a person being injured by carrying bags off.
That is a weak argument at best. Consider a simple coin toss, its a fifty-fifty gamble as to whether it will be heads or tails. Now consider you have done this and it has come up twenty times as heads. The next coin toss, will it be heads or tails? Yep its still a fifty-fifty chance again. Fate has no memory and the chance, or risk is identical.
In the case of an evacuation you do not know the risk, as a passenger ALL you know for certain is that the crew are telling you to get off, and that you have been instructed (by the safety demo) to leave all your bags behind. What risk are you taking? you do not know. In the Manchester, most of those that died were killed by smoke inhalation.
So lets once again think about the LAS - it stopped for exactly the same reasons as the BA28M at Manchester - an engine fire, so from a passenger viewpoint, can you explain why bags were not appropriate on one occasion and not on the other? You are not in a position to assess the risk until after the event when more information has become evident and you have had a chance to cogitate.
As an industry we simply cannot let passengers, scared out of their wits, terrified and not in full possession of the relevant facts and risks to make a judgement as to whether taking their bags off might or might not be sensible. You say that no one has died and no slide has been torn, for your argument to be worth anything you would need to right in 100% of occasions, my "bet" is the one that the insurance company makes when it covers a risk.
To put it another way. I have flown over 5000 times. I have only ever practised engine inop flying as I have never suffered a wing engine failure in flight. Why then bother with any training, after all there must have been a couple of dozen evacs in that time and your assertion that pax taking bags has never caused a death or damaged a slide in that time "proves" that it is safe, so my 5000 times aloft must surely "prove" we could do away with one engine inop practice. Having done it that many times and having got away with it, it must be safe, right?