phlwookie

Cool, thanks. They reached out to me on Twitter, along with a ton of other media, but I've tried to send them to this thread to centralize the source of data - plus there were still things going on at work I needed to fend off.

MrRobertWilson37

We can't tell from the photo why someone chose to carry two bags when evacuating. I'm sure many people just instinctively grab the bags they have right under the seat. Some people may pick up a bag that someone ahead of them dropped (both because the person might really need it, and because it would likely get tripped on). And some people may have important medication that they might urgently need before emergency workers could get them what they needed (e.g. nitroglycerine tablets, epi-pens), and may not remember clearly in a panic situation which bag they put it in, or may have their phone in one bag and medication in another. No doubt some people are just jerks who think the rules don't apply to them and insist on carrying off everything they carried on, but I'm sure a lot of people have pretty good reasons for what they carry off with them.

I'm not sure what the process is for getting carry-on items removed from a plane and returned to owners after an emergency evacuation, but people have heard enough about airport workers stealing things from luggage that they tend to keep especially important or sentimentally valued items in their carry-ons and are understandably loathe to leave these items behind when they don't sense that their lives (or anybody else's) are really in immediate danger.

phlwookie

You can see my eyewitness account of it in this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/us-ai...ident-phl.html

pa3lsvt

I used to fly with empty pockets for comfort, but later realized I would want my phone and wallet if I evacuated a plane. So now they stay in my pockets rather than my under seat bag WHICH WILL STAY PUT IN AN EMERGENCY.

I'm also grateful that I moved up to a flight that arrived at ~1700 today, rather than 3771 which still hasn't left YYZ and is 2+ hours delayed.

jspira

PHLWookie was quoted in the below article as well (admittedly, I told the news editor to look at his eye-witness account when writing the story).

US Airways Plane Crashes in Philly

phlwookie

It is probably going to be relevant that it was very, very windy out of the west here today, and the abort decision might have occurred concurrent to a wind gust, some of which apparently routinely exceeded 40-50 MPH. From my vantage point, it didn't get my full attention until I, while working in the club on my laptop, saw it descending a few seconds after liftoff out of the corner of my eye then watched the bounce and gear collapse sequence I laid out on page 1 of this thread.

I saw no fire or smoke from either engine, but that doesn't mean that they didn't ingest debris. The only fire I saw were sparks caused by the friction of the aircraft skin on the runway after the collapse of the nose gear.

I can't tell you how frustrating it was to see that plane slide out of my line of vision and not be able to do anything or know how things turned out for a while, even though I got LiveATC up on my phone within a few minutes and got word that evacs were under way. All several of us could do was monitor how much smoke came over the the roof blocking our view and hope for the best.

george 3

Any one know if Sully was left stick?

stablemate77

i know they said on cnn it was caused by take off and had bad front tire but it got up in air then went down .....soo was it taking off or landing again.....in europe they say it was landing....how does gear go out like this.....bird in engine ? flat tire? soo its less serous as tire blew and people got out.....good too hear...glad it was only a tire flat and plane made an easy stop

sjpmurph01

On the plus side, my subsequent delays from this gave me enough time to grab some crab fries from Chickies & Petes...

tommyleo

You may want to consider boycotting that establishment after reading this:

Chickie's & Pete's to pay $8.5M in short-tipping case

GroundStop

I was in just such an incident at ORD back in 2010 on a UA 767, landing gear caught fire after landing. As pa3lsvt suggests, I had my phone, wallet and passport (Int'l flight) in my pockets thankfully. I would also suggest also keeping your SHOES on for takeoff and landing!

As I pointed out in a thread on here after the incident, I was amazed at the number of people coming down the slides with a multitude of items (bags, a stack of books and even a 2 feet tall wooden giraffe (I kid you not!)). I think some people just grab things subconsciously given the nature of the event, while others are just being plain stupid.

Glad that it seems everyone got out safely in this instance

FLIHGH

I'm glad somebody finally pointed this out. My family travels with medication in the carry on on every single flight that must be taken at certain times to avoid seizures, etc. You better believe that after a crash, they won't be getting their bags quickly if they leave them behind.

MojaveFlyer

I've never had to evac but I know I'd feel uncomfortable leaving my little laptop bag on the plane. That being said, it is clearly right to just get the heck off the plane ASAP. But if others around are grabbing their stuff, I can appreciate that some sort of herd mentality gets set in place. Not good.

If they would just think.... I'm inside this monster bomb (recall the WTC!), this plane just skidded down the runway, there's got to be some really hot metal out there... run run run!

f0xx

I find it funny that ATC had to tell the ground folks to watch out for passengers on the tarmac. Guess they didn't want another Asiana accident.

Jay K

Good tips re: keeping things in pockets pa3lsvt and Groundstop.

Did you eventually get all your stuff back? Or were things "ruined" by some flame retardant foam, or they just never returned items left? Quite curious.