Originally Posted by howellajohnson
I would have agreed with your logic, but I was in a crash landing once where the landing gear was stuck in the up position and before impact the FAs instructed the PAXs to move to the front and back of the cabin and to remove all shoes.
I later learned that the apparent reasoning behind the removal of the shoes was that the impact of the landing could easily force the heel of the shoe through your foot and that there was also a real risk that shoes would rip the evacuation slides unlike barefeet or socks.
Shoeless, everyone survived and no slides were ripped.
Moving the passengers was most probably to get everyone close to door exits instead of window for easier evacuations. The breakage part could have been a factor, I suppose, but I would bet more on the door exit theory.
The old procedures used to call for shoe removal so the slides wouldn't puncture. They have since decided that if you are evacuating a plane you would be safer in shoes to step through and away from debris.