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Aviation industry leaders are reminding passengers that they must leave their luggage when fleeing a plane during an emergency.
The warning comes after dozens of fatalities in Russia were blamed on people trying to collect their laptops and other baggage during an evacuation. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said the problem has become too extensive to ignore. Nick Careen — head of safety and security for the organization, which represents 330 airlines — said cellphone footage has shown passengers clutching their belongings while on escape chutes.
“We need to educate the customer on why the regulations are there,” says Careen. Airlines must run test evacuations to ensure a plane can be emptied within 90 seconds — but these assume flyers’ main goal is getting to safety as soon as possible. But in reality passengers often try to fetch items from overhead lockers, blocking aisles and endangering everyone.
This is what happened in Russia in 2019 when 41 people died in a fiery Aeroflot plane crash that was reportedly worsened by flyers grabbing their carry-ons before fleeing. “Fines never work, unfortunately. Despite the fact that this is a global standard and a requirement on every flight, the propensity is that it is still a challenge,” said Careen.
There have been textbook evacuations. All 379 people abandoned their hand luggage to escape down three emergency slides after a Japan Airlines jet burst into flames after colliding with a smaller aircraft at Tokyo Haneda airport in January.
But David Soucie, a former Federal Aviation Administration official, told CNN: “I think if that happened in the United States, it would have been a very different scenario because of our attachment to our carry-on bags, our laptops, our phones, our things that we want to take with us.”