chollie

What's confusing?

You referenced someone who tweeted/posted that he went through customs. He wasn't taken off the field in a gurney, and I believe he may have had his passport with him (as well as his phone). Once he reached the terminal (presumably transported with all other ambulatory pax), he would be able to go through 'normal' customs processing.

If he'd been picked up by an ambulance and/or had left his passport/ID behind on the plane, it is not clear how the process would be handled. I'd like to think that CBP would take the initiative to use the pax manifest and make it as easy as possible for pax with no ID and medical issues. Unfortunately, bureaucrats don't always rise to the occasion, although you would think they have been trained to handle a scenario like this. I wonder how they would handle a solo traveler with no ID who was unconscious?

Shimon

Snowden???

some dude

I've heard from friends who traveled by Private Jet before that they typically when they enter any country (USA included), that Customs usually does a very very cursory check of the passengers (merely seeing that they have passports from approved countries is usually enough), and that they usually have to ASK to get stamps.

I'd bet the passengers all got to leave the airport without any passport check, and have an undefined status. Just a guess, though.

GUWonder

Not necessarily. We flew a few international (albeit intra-Schengen) flights to Germany last month with a passenger with an artificial name with no documentation in hand other than a phone boarding pass.

GUWonder

He is a true American and will always be. The post to which you responded mentioned non-Americans.

Loren Pechtel

Anyone who can afford to travel by private jet is unlikely to be the sort the US wants to keep out, such laxity isn't exactly surprising.

GUWonder

Apparently after a crash, some passengers may decide to grab their carry-on luggage (including perhaps even duty-free alcohol purchases) while evacuating the plane.

whitearrow

It's not exactly the same situation, but I had a relative killed in a major air disaster 15-20 years ago. It was a US carrier and the crash happened in a foreign country. The airline really went out of its way to help family members who were in the US get there as soon as they could, including flying them there free, etc. That makes me suspect that in a situation like this one, the airline would be the first point of contact for helping surviving passengers with whatever logistical support they need -- hotels, flights home, short term cash, internet and phone service, liaising with consulates to replace documents, etc. One would think it would be in their best interests to do so, anyway.

Boraxo

I, too, was disturbed to read that - until I read later that the rationale provided was that the luggage fell on the passengers due to the rough landing (or tail breakoff) so they had no choice but to put their hands up and grab it. Now that raises the question of what to do next - they couldn't very well leave it blocking the aisles but perhaps they could have thrown it on their seats. Hard to predict what people will do in an emergency under stress.

In this case I might cut them a break, but in another situation (where the bins were closed when the plane stopped) maybe not. Certainly no breaks for anyone who opened a closed bin to grab stuff!

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.

You want to go where?

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.

GUWonder

That is a very good summary of this kind of situation.

The interesting thing is that there was very little of this sort of behavior on the USAirways flight that did an emergency landing in one of the rivers alongside Manhattan. The circumstances were different in a number of ways, including the very important fact that swimming in the river with cabin baggage probably doesn't seem like a good way to save much of anything, including a non-threatening relationships with people already on the wing of that plane.

You want to go where?

You did create the rather bizarre vision in my mind of someone carrying their 22 inch roll-aboard in a life-saving hold as they swim away from the aircraft.

Another possible factor in the US Airways flight might have been that they had time for crew instructions reminding people not to bring cabin baggage. (I don't know this for a fact, just a recollection that the crew did have time to prepare the cabin for hudson landing).

MCTUBBS

I've had 3. They are surprisingly svelte when loaded with a paperback or two, a cell phone, my passport/wallet, and one or two bottles of water.

I have actually forgotten how much stuff I had "on" until I took the jacket off and realized how heavy it was.

The arms zip off mine for warmer weather.

msmoxie

I'm wondering why the different (more negative) responses directed toward tigerhunt2011 compared to the person who keeps his Scottevest behind his legs, in front of his seat? If he was in the window seat, I frankly don't care what he wants to grab from under his seat because I'm certainly not waiting for him to deplane if I'm in the row behind. If he's the window or the middle seat and in my way, I would have some choice words if he is rummaging through to find something. But if it's a small duffel that he can truly just grab and go, this seems equivalent to the "Scottevest behind the legs" example. What am I missing?