Originally Posted by
bzcat
The cabin crew then spent the next 10 minutes doing cabin search in a burning plane. The Captain was the last one to leave from the rear exit 18 minutes after collision, which was the time JAL mentioned in the press conference.
And crucially, based on reports I've seen (probably in this thread), the captain (and crew?) in fact found additional passengers in that 10 minute search who had not evacuated for whatever reason. So a damn good thing the crew didn't say "OK, we've taken 8 minutes and there's no one continuing off the plane, time for us to leave so people on the Internet don't criticize us for taking 18 minutes to evacuate".