In-flight baggage compartment access
 

Are any of the commercial-passenger or charter versions of the Embraer or Bombadier 40-to-90 passenger jets equipped with a rear door by the lavatory that allow in-flight access by the Flight Attendents to the rear baggage comparment? I seem to remember tech specs on one of the Embraer jets that had this but can't seem to remember which one or find this info.... maybe it was a diffferent small jet than the ones I'm thinking of?

(Also, if this is not the right forum please direct me to the right one -- thanks.)

Maybe in a Wesley Snipes movie.

Remember that puddle-jumpers are carefully balanced from front to back. and it would only take one misguided individual who dislodges a whole pile of luggage looking for his checked bag to unbalance the aircraft and place it at risk of an unrecoverable flat spin.

Perhaps a more realistic concern would be preventing pax from bringing items from their checked baggage into the cabin...pocket knives for example.

heh pocketknives... firearms, electric drills and whole bunch of other things comes to mind (the worst being liquids above 3 oz)

Interesting answers but doesn't answer the question -- did I see Yeses or Nos in those answers? If "Yes", then which planes have that kind of access? thanks.

Yes -- but not that I know of on an Embraer. You can on an IL-86, which has large, accessible lower-level baggage compartments. It is a huge aircraft, though. Not all of the baggage compartments are accessible from the passenger compartment. Three of them are (passengers board through these). Two freight compartments are not accessible.

Interesting question for a brand new member.

I'm curious, why the question?

IIRC one of the ATR models has the baggage compartment between the cabin and the cockpit. There is a door behind the FA jump-seat that goes through the luggage hold and to the front of the plane.

Looking at the picture of the ATR42 on this page it does appear that the cargo door is in front of the passenger windows.

Also, I'm going to move this to TravelBuzz!! where it will have a more appropriate audience.

Maybe the OP is a writer?

I've often used fora to check if something I'm writable is feasible without being too 'woo-woo' for the masses.

Just my .02

OK, all you post-911 suspicious types :D -- I confess that
vs_itsallgood
hit it on the head.

Do I really have to give away my novel's plot just to get an answer?

BTW, I posted this in another forum (not flyertalk) and got the same suspicious reaction -- is everybody paranoid out there?

It's interesting though what
mbstone
comments were (unbalancing the plane) -- brings another interesting plot scenerio for me -- can you really unbalance a plane enough just by shifting the baggage around -- makes me wonder what would happen if 4 or 5 people were all waiting by the bathroom because they "really gotta go now". Could this be the reason why a few planes mysteriously crashed in the past? :D

OK -- I just found this on the internet (and I truncated down to just the relevant parts):

...Bombardier showcases the CRJ900 in India... ...Another feature that goes down well with regional carriers is the underfloor baggage compartment that allows passengers to put away last minute oversized baggage as they board and collect it at the plane-side on landing, thereby letting them avoid the long queues at check-in counters. In the CRJ900 there are two doors to access this compartment that will speed up the process further. Also, the aft baggage compartment that is generally used to store cargo is easily accessible and divided into two parts by a restraint system that facilitates optimal usage and is twice the size of the ones in other CRJ aircraft...

I'm not sure if this is verifying in-flight access to the aft-baggage compartments, -or- implying that it has easy access when on the ground -or- easy outside (ground-crew) access. ( for plot purposes, I'm not interested in the underfloor storage).

Whatta ya'll think it means?

I think it might be time to give Bombardier a call. Always best to go right to the horse's mouth. Consider for the purposes of writing that very few airlines these days would allow pax to have access to this, even if it exists.

Quite a few years back a plane carrying a soccer team went down in the mountains (Italian Alps I think) and the survivors went cannbalistic. Crash was because the players moved all of their baggage aft so they could play cards and the plane ran out of elevator and couldn't climb over the crest. Basic answer is that yes, you can adversely affect the balance of even a fairly large airplane if you have enough people/baggage!

I think you may be referring to the "Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known less formally as the Andes flight disaster", whilst not wanting to rely totally on Wiki the cause of the crash seems to be the pilot getting lost rather than luggage being moved.

Nope, it was navigational errors causing the plane to crash into the side of the mountain.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay..._571#The_crash