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Why would anyone evacuating a
plane waste precious moments
retrieving his Sudoku book
Everyone's heard the Kafkaesque stories of people getting stuck living in airports for hundreds of days [1] or having to pay huge sums for hotels and different flights out of their own pockets. Not that I imagine that would happen if you fled a burning plane - but who'd be calm enough to reason that through while their plane was on fire?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_...
When traveling, I keep those important and valuable belongings (identification, money, life sustaining meds) on my persons either on inside pockets or a holder on a lanyard tucked inside my clothes. The only time I might be separated from them is when going through airport security. Typically I'll hang onto my ID though and carry it through the body scanners (unless they tell me not to).
I do the same: passport, visa, wallet and mobile stay in my jeans' pockets through the flight.
I don’t do this anymore ever since my passport fell out of my pocket onto the airline seat after a long haul. I was able to get it back, but lesson learned: passport goes into my carryon after the secondary visa check before boarding.
The only thing you need is your passport. This is because if you de-plane without it, you have to wait for the authorities to confirm your identity, which can take hours. Which can happen if e.g. your plane overshoots a runway in the mildest case. Money is maybe a close second, followed by a phone.
(edit: parent was edited to include the part about the "the Kafkaesque stories", so this response seems to duplicate things a bit now)
How is it the only thing you'll need though? If you're not wealthy then the loss of some of that stuff can complicate your life.
Not really. You don't evacuate airplanes unnecessarily since people get scared, trampled or hurt. So once there is an evacuation you can't treat it like anything else than an actual emergency. At which point no one is expected to have their documents. If it turns out to not be a life treating situation someone will get you your stuff soon enough and otherwise you shouldn't have it anyway.
People don't understand rapidly evolving situations because it is hard to do. They will do whatever they normally do. They will process what is happening in their own frame of reference. Which isn't "smoke inhalation in 30 seconds", but "let's hurry a little bit". I don't necessarily think you should blame people though.
Not to mention life saving medication. I frequently travel with someone who has a kidney transplant. Their medication is always in their carry-on and with them so it doesn't get lost or shipped ahead.
If our plane went down I would definitely be helping them retrieve their carry on as we evacuated the plane because they would die without their medication.
To take the recent example: Medication so rare the Moscow medical system can't provide it in time?
I used to think that if I was ever in a plane crash I'd want to save my laptop, so now I've gotten into the habit of carrying a small SSD drive with me whenever I travel. I use it to image the hard drive on my laptop. I keep it in a ziploc bag in my pocket. Other than that, I never take anything with me on a trip that I'm not willing to lose. That way if I am ever in a plane crash, the drive, already in my pocket, is all I need to save from among my belongings. Keeping it in a ziploc means it will be OK even if we go down over water. (And, of course, I've got backups at home too.)
You might want to get a better bag if you're worried about submersion. Ziplocs are not necessarily completely water tight out of the box, and they degrade pretty quickly in use (like the constant rubbing that'll be produced by carrying it in your pocket all the time). Wad up some toilet paper in an old ziploc or two and submerge them for a few minutes, then check the paper...you might not like the results. Consider a dry bag like rafters/kayakers use.
I always fly with my passport in my pocket for similar reason.
I am fine with losing all tech though, with everything being encrypted and backups with anything important elsewhere that seems like a minor inconvenience.
You're kidding right? Plane crash? Over water?
You'd be lucky to survive, who cares about your hard drive.
This is to save your few hours of works while on widi-less plane? Or do you not use cloud drives?
What if you get struck by lightning? Better make that a faraday cage ziploc bag.
Planning for a plane crash is probably the most ridiculous, insane thing one can do. There is a benefit trade-off of preparation time and being worried all the time. It bothers me when I see people always in “guarded” mode - these people seem to never live freely, enjoy the moment and they constantly worry about someone stealing their wallets or their car. I had a manager at work who would steering lock with a giant steel rod on his brand new Mercedes which has a number of safety/anti-theft systems.
I go to the other extreme which is probably also insane. I never use a phone case, put a leather cover on my passport or any of these things. I’ve realized that I have so many years to live and enjoy the products as they’re designed. If I were to buy a Ferrari, you bet your bottom dollar I am driving the shit out of it.
Edit: I want to clarify: I wear seatbelts, safety glasses (even when frying something in the kitchen, yes your kitchen is essentially a chemical lab with a Bunsen burner), sunscreen, regular health screenings, go to the dentist, shower, etc. I think people are totally missing my point if your argument is about ignoring safety, sanitation, etc.
This probably has a large amount of 'survivorship bias' embedded in it (no pun intended).
People who are frantic, time-critical, but not immediate life-threatening situations probably grab their bag (ie. the landing gear on plane has failed, but plane has stopped on runway intact and not on fire).
This probably differs significantly if the plane was ripped in half, or people were choking from thick toxic smoke. Those people probably don't even think about grabbing their bag because they are in active severe pain / dying.
Point is, people are making a rational decision that "This is a dangerous situation and I need to get out of here, but I will probably survive", therefore they take their stuff with them.
I'm not sure humans are very rational while in a panic. You hear a lot of stories of people being in life threatening situations and make irrational decisions, and the ones who survived saying they cannot explain why, but this one stupid thing they focused on was somehow extremely important to them at the time.
Because you don’t act rationally in a disaster:
In moments of total disaster — plane crashes or terrorist attacks — something happens in our brains that affects the way we think. We behave differently, often irrationally. Consider the World Trade Center workers who, on Sept. 11, dithered at their desks, calling relatives, turning off computers and pondering which mementos to rescue from their desks even as the doomed jets burned above their heads.
In The Unthinkable, Ripley cites a National Institute of Standards and Technology study that showed that those who made it out of the WTC waited an average of six minutes after the plane hit their building before heading for the exit and walking slowly — not running — down the stairs.
Ripley searches for patterns in human behavior by interviewing hundreds of people who lived through catastrophes. Quick-witted survivors are surprisingly anomalous. One fellow who made it through a horrific aircraft disaster in 1977 happened to be sitting on the runway reading an in-flight safety instruction card when another plane crashed into his. He grabbed his wife, leapt through a hole in the fuselage, and turned to see his fellow passengers remaining docilely in their seats, immobile. Most of them died within minutes as fire swept through the wreckage.
The author concludes that all of us undergo a three-stage process when we find ourselves in mortal peril: denial, deliberation and the "decisive moment," during which the survivor buckles down and acts. The trick, she says, may be to understand our instincts, which, in a crisis, may betray us. Some people run toward infernos, not away, and even in the face of obvious impending disaster, some people just won't move.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=930339...
When I am on a plane. Especially on foreign trips, quite a substantial amount of thoughts goes into not leaving anything behind, and thinking about scenarios what would happen if I lost or forgot something important. Of course everything of those items would be less important in a life and death situation but as my brain is already trained for holding onto my stuff I can understand why this happens.
I am not saying that this is a good thing but I think ingrained habits are hard to break.
What I’m wondering is how many of those people complaining on the Twitterverse did so while driving or otherwise putting others at risk.
We live to think we’d do otherwise, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know we’d do the same..
What if my bag contains my identification, prescriptions, inhaler? there are a lot of reasons to want your bag. What if you are a parent who carries things to maintain the health/safety of a small child, does your 2 year old take responsibility for their asthma medication?
Then you can carry it on your body while being on a plane. Would that be worth the inconvenience to you?
Do you really think the authorities that will be shepherding you from the plane crash are going to deny you asthma medicine after the event?
I think it reveals that we should relieve people of the choice.
If it's not feasible to train and educate people until the proper behaviour is a muscle memory, then maybe we need to find a way to eliminate choice.
what do you mean? like lock down the overhead bins so people can't get to their stuff?
Because it is not fined?
I mean, if the options are a 20k fine or leaving your bag, then for most people the choice is simple.
It'd probably work better as an incentive: $20k compensation for everyone who leaves without a bag.
If we're going to legalize something - how about requiring that airlines (or their insurance) compensate passengers for all expenses related to restoring their stuff lost in an accident?
Then the choice is also simple, and it sounds way better than fining or prosecuting accident victims.
Article did not breach a few points.
First, why is there no law or clear punishment against grabbing your luggage in an emergency or otherwise obstructing the safe exit from the plane? If someone were intentionally obstructing others in this or in another situation (burning building) that would clearly be most likely seen as some type of crime. Why not here?
Why no announcement on the plane? (Back up by the 'federal crime' as they do with smoking in the lavatory).
> Psychologists caution, though, against being too quick to judge.
The fact that there should be no judgement or we should not think we would do different does not detract that people might have to get drilled into them not to follow some particular behavior. It's almost as if the psychologists and trying to give the behavior a pass.
> That passenger reaching for the bag with his favorite sweater or maybe a present for his kid? He’s probably just acting human.
Not really. What is human about prioritizing a 'present for your kid' or 'your favorite sweater'? That's irrational. Non adult. And actually child like. People should not get a pass for doing stupid things.
> grabbing for possessions is more common than one might think
Actually what is probably happening is people see other people grab things and then mimic that behavior. You see the same type of thing with traffic. One person does a u turn and then a bunch of people follow.
> “We have in the past publicly commented on the need for passengers to leave carry-on items behind during an emergency,” said Christopher O’Neil'
I wish there were no speeding laws and tickets and the state just gave that type of friendly reminder!
> The fact that there should be no judgement or we should not think we would do different does not detract that people might have to get drilled into them not to follow some particular behavior.
> I wish there were no speeding laws and tickets
I understand what you’re saying, and as a driver and frequent flier, appreciate both points.
Unfortunately, the reality is in absolute numbers:
There are large numbers of people speeding daily, and large numbers of people dying on the roads daily, globally.
There are orders of magnitude fewer numbers of people flying on planes that perform emergency disembarking events, and more orders of magnitude fewer people dying in these instances.
Given the frequency of reminders getting drilled into drivers that speed kills, who continue to speed frequently, how frequent would reminders to not grab possessions in an emergency situation actually have to be in order to be effective?
The base premise of the point to not judge is that in an emergency situation, some people are acting on instinct.
Meanwhile people who speed are more often making a conscious decision to do so based on their own view of road conditions.
If you're poor though, losing that stuff could mean very bad things in the future. Would you be okay with those people staying on board until everyone else has gone and then grabbing their stuff? I would probably be willing to be the last to leave if it meant I could take my stuff.
Edit: even if it meant that I'd be taking considerable risk.
There are a lot of things that, if done individually, make sense, but if the whole group does it there is a problem. Leaving your bag behind means that you have to replace it later which costs a lot and takes time. So it makes sense to avoid this trouble. It also makes sense to rush to wards the exit if there is a fire but if everyone does it you have a problem.
Perhaps the overhead bins should be lockable from the cockpit?
This is the same thought I had as well and when I thought about it a bit and although it does have some utility draw backs (have to ask the flight attendant to open the bin to get something from your bag) it seems like it would also have some other benefits for safety as well such as preventing people from opening the bins when the fasten seatbelts sign is on, or popping open during turbulence.
I'm pretty forgetful, and so over the years I've trained myself to automatically keep a list of stuff I have on me, and do a quick check whenever I move from place to place to make sure I'm not leaving anything behind. Over the years, this has become an almost subconcious process.
So I suspect in a similar disaster I might be one of those people grabbing their luggage, just because in a panic I can see myself mindlessly "defaulting" to my usual routine as I get up to try and escape.
Does the shift to charging for checked bags make this worse? I suspect this choice is new to most people since they used to have that stuff locked away from sight.
Why? I can think of two reasons. Habit. This is pretty powerful. I've deplaned a normal plane at least a hundred times. I've deplaned from a burning plane zero times.
Second is, especially in the digital age, my laptop, phone, go pro, all have digital data that is irreplaceable that I may not have backed up yet.
Because I didn’t push my code yet, obviously.
This is a well-known post ussr feature "do not give a #it about anyone but yourself".
I wonder why you're downvoted. I live in a former Soviet state and my impression is that the Soviet era taught people to always prioritize your own stuff, because nobody else will care about it.
As someone who was born and raised in Soviet Union/Russia and spent half of my life there I read this article with a bit of amusement seeing Westerners trying to make sense of this typical Soviet behavior. You're absolutely right. If anyone has any interest in seeing how this kind of stuff plays out in Russia, try to find and watch movie The Fool [1]
I often have my backpack stowed under the seat in front of me. I could theoretically put it on while still seated. But I'm sure I'll be fractions faster if I'm not wearing it.
i'm first aid / pre-hospital rescue trained and i carry a small first aid kit in my bag at all times.
I'm going to be more useful if I take my bag, and I can have it out from under the seat in front of me and around my body in seconds.
So yeah, I'm taking my bag.
Paywall and outline doesn't seem to work with NYT.