If you want to engage in some speculation about Saturday’s crash in San Francisco, James Fallows, a private pilot, and Patrick Smith, a professional pilot, are both worth a read. From Smith, this, a thousand times this:
Meanwhile, looking at some of the footage, I was appalled by the number of passengers who chose to evacuate the burning aircraft with their carry-on luggage. We’ve seen this in several on-the-runway evacuations in recent years. I understand that reaching for one’s valuables is human nature, and that people don’t always behave rationally in a crisis, but lugging your carry-ons down the aisle in the middle of an emergency evacuation, when seconds can mean the difference between life and death, is reckless. You’re endangering not merely your own life, but the lives of those people behind you. And those escape slides are much higher and steeper than it appears on television. They are not designed with convenience in mind. They are there to get a planeload of people out of, and away from, the aircraft as quickly as possible — without their belongings. When you slide, you slide very fast, and jumping into a slide with your belongings places physical obstacles directly in the path of others.
One of the recent evacuations Smith is referencing is the Air France “Miracle in Toronto” in August, 2005, where all on board survived a runway overrun and crash into a ravine and post-crash fire. In addition to taking carry-ons with them, at least one of those passengers snapped pictures during the evacuation. Given the rarity of survivable crashes, and the dire need to get the fuck out of the plane as soon as possible after a survivable crash, taking your carry-on or snapping pictures is like running back into a serial killer’s house after getting away because you left your cell phone on his kitchen table.
jeffreyw
But, but…it’s an S4 and I just got it!
BGinCHI
What if your carry-on was stuffed with hundred dollar bills?
Or puppies?
PeakVT
I suppose there’s a technological fix to the carry-on issue – bins that latch unless positively deactivated from the cockpit. That might keep everybody from standing up while planes are taxi-ing to the terminal as well.
sparrow
I guess I would understand if it was someone’s pet stowed under the seat or something, but yes, people are stupid.
I’ve been reading the airliners.net forums and one thing that was pointed out was that a large number of the passengers (like the two 16 year olds that died) were teenagers going to summer camps, and were probably not experienced travelers and possibly on their first flight or at least long-haul. So, it could have been that they didn’t understand the need to get off really quickly.
aimai
People just aren’t rational at that moment–or any moment really. Can’t imagine the strength of will and skill that flight attendants need to exert over a horde of hysterical travellers.
Shakezula
This is odd and contradictory. On the one hand he states that grabbing valuables in an emergency is human nature. (I disagree, but I’m not the expert.) And that people don’t act rationally in an emergency. (I do agree.)
Then he goes on to express shock and dismay that people act like people in an emergency by irrationally grabbing their valuables.
So, what are we talking about?
Edit: The other thing an expert in these matters must know is that without regular drills, most non-professionals are not going to react rationally in an emergency. It is kind of sucky that in addition to going through a traumatic incident, people must endure a critique of how they coped. (“I give her a 6.5 on her exit from the burning plane.)
aimai
@sparrow: This is especially sad, to me. I just came back from a trip to Europe. In a set of seats near me (two rows of three) there were some teens travelling “alone”–that is, with just supervision from the flight attendants. They were very happy, very plugged in to their music and they were just completely cut off from everything around them. They were so flexible that they often sat, crosslegged, facing the back of their seats. They never got up to let each other out of the row but rather assumed their friends would climb over them by stepping on the seat arms and sort of slithering out. I can well imagine that two well behaved, frightened, sixteen year olds whose english was not very good would have just no idea what was happening or what to do or they might even have yielded to someone older or more forceful and have hung back (my daughters would have done this if something happened).
Another Halocene Human
what ifyour carryon was under the seat, not overhead, and had identity documents that are unreplaceable because of REAL ID in it? What if it contained tools and/or documents needed to work?
Not everyone has wealthy families and Mastercard’s phone number memorized to help them through all the bumps in life.
If you don’t return to your job that is abandonment, so you have to call your boss, can’t call without cellphone, oops, cell phone is burned up, need money, oops, no cash, cc is lost, courtesy phone at airport doesn’t call long distance, cops don’t care. No ID, can’t even go home. Congrats, you’re a hobo.
Maybe people would leave their shit behind if there wasn’t so much at stake.
Shakezula
@sparrow: That’s a stack of assumptions there but at the end of the day, experience flying and experience exiting a crashed plane are (fortunately) two entirely different things.
NotMax
What, no pausing in order to text?
Another Halocene Human
Sad to hear about those teenagers. If under 18 you probably CAN lose your identity documents and be okay. (At least, the State Dept will still let a parent vouch for you, and should be easy to get dupe birth cert.) Who knows what happened. Maybe just in cheap seats furthest from exits and inhaled too much toxic vapor.
nancydarling
“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”—H.D Thoreau
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Shakezula: At one of my jobs I was part of the emergency response team (we were in a 16 story building). During one of the drills for an evacuation, I’m clearing everyone out, and I see a woman go into the stairs and then come back out. When I followed her back to her cube, I found out she was trying to get her laptop, even though, when it was over, she was going to be allowed back into the office.
Chyron HR
Which of Obama’s enemies were on the plane? Or did he just bring it down to try and intimidate Snowden into staying on the ground?
raven
@Shakezula: No shit, people will bitch about any goddamn thing.
Another Halocene Human
Technically, teens should have a lot of practice with bus evacuations, whereas most adults in civilian life would not have done that in years.
raven
@Another Halocene Human: Chinese teens? WTF?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@NotMax: Early in World War Z the movie, when the zombies are running through wherever it is the movie starts, someone is taking video with their camera. Probably the most realistic part of the movie.
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: Flight attendants are trained for that, though. The issue is when you have patrons that don’t respect them (which is why I don’t blame airlines for ejecting such passengers and the law for backing them up) and that flight attendants are actually quite at risk for being injured during an event like this (unless the pilot has time to warn them). In some crashes the flight attendants were incapacitated.
raven
I bet there will be stories of incredible bravery and quick thinking that will emerge too. It hardly could have been THAT bad if only two people died and one of them got killed by being run over.
Another Halocene Human
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): cf: storm chasers, douchebags who try to surf storm surges during hurricanes
Another Halocene Human
@raven: I’m talking about US teens, since people are speculating about teens in general (eg their own kids). Fuck if I know about other countries’ fire drill laws and procedures.
MattF
Fallows and Smith are very much the sites to go to for info in this. And they both agree that the first stories/impressions are generally wrong. So, reader beware.
Robert Sneddon
I heard the two Chinese kids who died were at the extreme rear of the aircraft along with two flight attendants who suffered severe spinal injuries. Seeing the footage of the landing and the way the aircraft’s tail hit the ground I suspect they didn’t survive the impact. Flight attendants wear a complicated but much more secure four-point harness rather than a simple lap belt and they still got badly injured. My guess is that most of the severe and life-threatening injuries will have happened to folks at the back of the cabin.
Laur
@Another Halocene Human: lol I don’t think people who survived a plane crash really have to worry about, you know, courtesy phones not working. They’ll get the help they need. This isn’t some story about travelers getting stuck in an airport forever because of a snafu.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Sometimes you don’t even realize.
I was at the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 – had a store collapse all around me while I was in line. It wasn’t until I got outside and got oriented that I realized that I still had everything that I had been intending to buy still in my hands. How I got out of the building without putting all that shit down, I literally can’t tell you.
I threw it all back in through the window I climbed out of and left.
Phil
Erm. What are the odds of surviving a plane crash?
But what if you’re onboard that 1 in 1.2 million flights that ends up in an accident? Surprisingly, you’re much more likely to walk away from an airline accident than you are to perish. In fact, a staggering 95.7 percent of people involved in plane crashes survive. Even in the most serious class of crashes, more than 76 percent survive [source: NTSB].
Skynyrd Nimoy
Oh for fuck’s sake. Tell me about the noble decisions you made when YOU were involved in a crash landing? I seriously doubt if any of you are going to leave your Macbook Air there to burn when all you have to do is grab it and take it with you. Fuck you. I’m getting my stuff.
Taylor
On Saturday night, I saw a 15 year old off at the airport, heading to summer camp abroad, so the tragedy of the girls killed in this accident really hits a nerve. They must have been so excited to be heading off abroad for the summer. My heart aches for them and their families.
And are the multiple system failures just another indication of our shitty crumbling infrastructure?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@PeakVT: Or the airlines could do what the pilots and flight attendants have been begging them to do for years – ban carry on luggage (laptops, tablets, purses OK, nothing else). The benefits for boarding and emergency evac would be incalculable.
aimai
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Yup.
PeakVT
@Taylor: I don’t think so. Flying is incredibly safe. Our failing infrastructure is mostly the kind that rich people don’t use – urban water systems, public transit, public schools and other facilities – or can glide over because they drive expensive cars (or get driven in expensive cars).
Laur
@Taylor: huh? This had nothing to do with infrastructure whatsoever? It had to do with a pilot who was in training and just didn’t know what he was doing. The end.
@Forum Transmitted Disease: hahahahahhaha that’ll never happen. Especially with most airlines now charging fees for even just one checked bag.
joes527
@PeakVT: First they would have to design a bin that doesn’t open by itself when the plane hits a little bump.
BTW. The description that I read in the paper yesterday said that at least some of the bins opened when the plane hit the ground and dumped their contents on the people sitting below, so, yeah, stronger bin latches wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Jay in Oregon
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Given that major airlines charge per-bag fees for checked baggage anymore, there is a huge financial incentive for people to bring as much as they can in carry-ons.
Taking that away without giving passengers at least one free checked bag (and the airlines are just stupid enough to do that) will be a PR nightmare.
terraformer
Well, people are going to do what they’re going to do – and none of us can realistically imagine what we’d do in such a situation – so while we can bitch about this, and I agree it’s crazy, it’s certainly understandable.
If we want people to get themselves out of the plane in a situation like this, then it begins with some added language to the standard “here’s how the seat belt works” monologue, repeated over and over, and even then only some people might get it. But as a population we’re a selfish bunch, obsessed with material things and in getting and keeping them, so it’s going to be a long haul.
RSA
@PeakVT:
According to The Telegraph, the death rate for passengers was 1 in 6.1 million for the five years ending in 2012; it was 1 in 3.7 from 2000 through 2009 and 1 in 1.8 million between 1990 and 1999. That’s pretty safe.
mistermix
@Phil: I should have said “survivable major crashes”, then, because the NTSB investigates a ton of “crashes”. Here’s the nut graph from that report, btw:
TooManyJens
@Shakezula:
This. “Sure, it’s completely predictable that this is what would happen, but how dare these people behave irrationally in a frightening situation they’ve never experienced before?” Um, OK.
And I’m not even sure it’s “grab your valuables” so much as it is “grab the stuff that makes you feel more secure when you have it.” Like your wallet and phone and medications and whatever you carry those in.
Taylor
@PeakVT: Fallow clarifies what I was thinking of:
mistermix
@terraformer: Yes, the briefings should be have less jargony language, should emphasize leaving carry-ons in the event of an evacuation, and there should be a safety re-brief near the end of long flights like this one.
joes527
@Robert Sneddon: This.
Despite all the patting on the back and tut-tutting going on over airline safety procedures, and who followed them and who didn’t, it looks like the live/die/injured outcome was largely determined by seating, and had fuck-all to do with having/not having your tray table stowed or your seat in the upright position.
joes527
@Jay in Oregon: Pro tip: If you can manage to get your ridiculously over sized carry-on past security, most airlines will check it at the gate for free. (especially if you are in boarding group QQ)
cvstoner
Nobody cares anymore about anyone but themselves. They’re more worried about the fact that their laptop survives than the person behind them.
This is the nation we have become.
Mandalay
@Phil:
That is a pretty meaningless number. The NTSB produced that figure based on deaths in “Part 121” accidents, meaning “accidents involving fire, serious injury, and either substantial airplane damage or complete destruction”. So it is perfectly possible to have “Part 121” accidents with no deaths. The US Airways flight which made a forced landing on the Hudson River a few years ago, with no deaths arising, was presumably such an example.
If you have the freedom to define the word “serious” as it suits you, death rates in “serious” accidents are meaningless. More cynically, they mean what you want them to mean.
PeakVT
@Taylor: Right, but I don’t think we yet know why it was out of service, whether it was an unusual or common event, and how often such systems are offline around the country.
I’m sure the FAA could use more funding, and that both maintenance and the NextGen system are being deferred due to moronic budget cuts. But so far planes aren’t crashing on a regular basis because of failures of public infrastructure. In fact, flying continues to get safer. So if our air transport infrastructure is “crumbling”, it’s also lagging the crumbling of other types of infrastructure by a good bit.
Laur
@cvstoner: Most of the people on this flight were from South and East Asia….
Laur
@cvstoner: Most of the people on this flight were from South and East Asia….
MikeJ
@Mandalay: Are you implying that putting an A-320 into the Hudson wasn’t a serious accident?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mandalay:
“In all accidents involving death, someone died 100% of the time.”
Mandalay
@Jay in Oregon:
This. One solution is to decrease the carry on allowance, which would always make boarding and leaving a plane much easier. Unfortunately I can’t see that happening.
Alternatively, maybe the airlines could concertedly (but illegally?) decide to start charging premium rates for carry on luggage.
jon
Here’s what you do: wear cargo pants while traveling. It’s not hard as you can find them in many places. They’re available for men and women. And they have lots of pockets. Or get a small purse/handbag/manbag/pouch that fits against you somehow. Put your phone in your pocket before landing. Put your money and identity documents and boarding passes for other flights and your Kindle or whatever else you can ON YOUR BODY. A jacket with inside pockets can work, too. Or even the shoulder holster-looking things Amazon has. If you have your life’s work on your laptop, get a backup service and insurance. If you have your children’s photos and all your passwords on a computer and you can’t lose it, you’re an idiot.
Yes, there are pickpockets and other assholes all around airports. But the best way to watch your stuff is to always keep it with you.
Also, wear shoes you can run in. I know comfort and getting them off and on again is essential, but if you can’t run you might die in a fire. Plus, the fire is unlikely to be on the moving sidewalk or even a runway.
Roger Moore
@Another Halocene Human:
American teens might- assuming they take the bus- but these were mostly Chinese teens. I don’t think they have the same kind of obsessive safety drilling that American teens do.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@PeakVT: I have never seen Americans get out of their seat while taxiing. Flights in China, on the other hand…
Just Some Fuckhead
If I was ever lucky enough to survive a plane crash, I’d leave everything behind, including my wallet and identification.
Then I’d leave the area, move to Alaska and start over.
schrodinger's cat
@Just Some Fuckhead: As an additional bonus, you could see Russia from your window
Shakezula
@TooManyJens: True, I didn’t think of the This Thing = Security issue. Plus, non-absent minded people seem to do things like grab their purses without thinking.
maya
If that had been a Floridian Air or Texaflot Airways plane all flight attendants would be carrying with SYG rules in effect and would have shot any bonehead mofos that tried to deviate from the established system, especially non-caucasian types. Thems are the rules, Bub. Freeeeedoms!
Mandalay
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Of course, but so what? The NTSB is choosing to provide a death rate in plane accidents based on their definition of what constitutes a “serious” accident, where such accidents might not have resulted in any deaths at all.
Intuitively, such accidents are not of the most “serious” type. The problem is with the NTSB’s taxonomy. It would be more reasonable if they only cited death rates for plane accidents that actually resulted in at least one death. Then I am sure that the survival rate in “serious” accidents would drop from 76%.
Uh... Yeah
@PeakVT: We do know why the ILS was out of service and it has nothing to do with failing infrastructure. The airport is in the process of moving the landing zone further down the runway. It has been out since June.
Shakezula
@Another Halocene Human: Bus evacuations? Is this a thing?
catclub
@BGinCHI: Frozen embryos — Holocaust!
kc
@Skynyrd Nimoy:
If your precious MacBook is in your lap, fine, take it. If its in some oversized bag that you have to wrestle out of the overhead bin … just don’t be in front of me.
aimai
@terraformer: But its not selfish. I agree with Halocene upthread: the kinds of things people carry on with them are the kinds of things that it is extremely important not to lose: personal papers, medicine, passports. People are going to continue to fear being separated from that stuff –especially given how brutally unforgiving society and governments have become towards people temporarily stripped of their identity cards and money.
Mnemosyne
@jon:
That’s what I’ve been doing lately — phone in one cargo pocket, wallet in the other. It would suck to lose my laptop etc. in my carry-on bag, but not as much as dying or being seriously injured.
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
It’s not going to happen until the airlines improve their baggage handling considerably. Passengers demand to be able to take carry on luggage because the airlines can’t make adequate promises about the security and reliable delivery of their checked luggage.
jehrler
I am disappointed in Patrick Smith and mastermix in coming down so hard on passengers carrying carry ons out of the plane. As far as I can tell this “analysis” is based only on the photos as the NTSB hasn’t commented yet on the evacuation.
Given the terrible G’s involved in the ground loop, it is hardly surprising there are reports of the overhead bins popping open and raining down bags upon the passengers.
So, you’ve just been in an accident and you are covered with carry ons and the aisle is full of them. What do you do? Assuming it is a pretty full flight there aren’t a lot of empty seats to toss them into. And, even if there are a few, putting these bags in seats could well interfere with non-aisle seat passengers trying to exit their row.
It may well be that the most rational and effective way to clear the exit routes is to take strewn carry ons off the plane. It could also be that thoughtless people were delaying the evacuation to get their bags. But, until the final NTSB report, *we don’t know*
Yes, it is not a great idea to exit with carry ons (can damage the slides and is hazard on the steep slides) but before getting on one’s high horse lets wait for the results of the NTSB investigation as they will have an evacuation evaluation.
Funny how pilots (like Smith) are, rightly, insistent on waiting until the NTSB results before casting blame on the pilots but jumped the gun to blame the passengers.
Laur
@jon: are you being serious?
1) Cargo pants are HELLA UGLY, and
2) the chances that you are actually going to be in a crash or emergency are incredibly low so dressing specifically for the purpose of getting away as fast as possible is dumb.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: I have had my luggage arrive after me on a couple of international trips. I don’t what I would have done without my carry-on bag.
Mandalay
@MikeJ:
It was certainly dramatic, and it was “serious” (in the intuitive sense of the word) for a plane to make a forced landing on a river, but I don’t think it was a “miracle” that everyone survived.
It was a step down from what we intuitively consider to be “serious” plane accidents.
The issue is that the NTSB incorporates the survival rate for such flights (100%!) when presenting the survival rate in “serious” plane accidents. I just find it hard to consider plane accidents where nobody dies as truly “serious”, though YMMV.
KXB
@Another Halocene Human:
I share this opinion. I keep my book-bag with me when I travel, and that has the essentials, such as ID, a little black book that keeps all my password/IDs (copy at home), a company cheat-sheet with the same info. My luggage with clothes – that I would leave behind.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Shakezula: This. Thank you.
Lee
@Taylor:
I read somewhere that the glide descent has been out for a month or more.
Cacti
@aimai:
Not to mention, most, if not all of those passengers are in a state of shock when it comes time to evacuate the plane. Unless you’ve trained extensively on how to react in life or death situations, you’re running on adrenaline and not likely to be asking yourself “is it rational to do this” as you move to extricate yourself from danger.
Mnemosyne
@jehrler:
I hadn’t heard the detail of the carry-on bins bursting open until today but, if that’s the case, then you’re absolutely right — the rational thing for the passengers do to is to pick them up and carry them to the exit so they don’t block other passengers from evacuating. It’s less “saving my laptop” and more “removing debris from the aisle.”
Lee
@Laur:
As a father of two, cargo pants while ugly are indispensable.
I can remember walking around Sea World having a sippy cup in each leg pocket.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
You’re not helping your argument. The point is that it’s possible to have a very serious accident and still have most of the people on board come out alive. The Asiana crash is a great example. The tail completely broke off, the rest of the plane was a burnt out hulk at the end, and there were a grand total of two fatalities. An accident that could very easily have killed everyone on board wound up being very survivable because the safety procedures were very good.
Look, you define sever accidents several different ways. They could be ones that produce serious structural damage to the plane, ones that meet some list of criteria of seriousness, or even ones that result in multiple fatalities. But the more stringently you define the accidents- so that a higher percentage of them result in massive fatalities- the smaller a percentage of all accidents they will be. The plain fact is that very few people are killed in commercial airline accidents. (General and military aviation are much dodgier.) The best estimate is that the biggest occupational hazard to pilots and flight attendants is from increased exposure to radiation when they’re flying above most of the atmosphere, not from crashes. That’s a safe means of transport.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. right. How many people carried other people’s carry-ons out the plane? I am guessing zero.
Much easier to toss onto empty window seats.
schrodinger's cat
@Lee: I once saw a father of triplets (all boys) and he had all the boys on a leash. They were about 3 years old, I think
Mnemosyne
@Laur:
I wear them, because (a) I’m 44 years old and married, so I don’t need to impress anyone with my fashion sense when I fly and (b) I personally know people who were in plane crashes where they had to evacuate, so my sense of “this could happen to me” may be a little heightened.
In any case, make sure you wear natural fibers (cotton, wool, silk, etc.) on your bottom half rather than nylon, polyester or other synthetics. The friction of the slide can cause synthetics to melt and burn your legs.
Daniel
@Chyron HR: Ask Ted and Helen; it will surely know.
rea
@MattF: “Seeing the footage of the landing and the way the aircraft’s tail hit the ground I suspect they didn’t survive the impact.”
There appears to be some evidence that one survived the crash, but was run over by an emergency vehicle.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
If there was a carry-on bag blocking me from reaching the exit, I would pick it up rather than trying to climb over it or leaving it for others to trip over. YMMV, of course, and we’ll find out as the investigation continues.
If the aisle is blocked with bags, there are still people in those window seats. But, hey, we’ll just toss bags on top of them, it’s not like they need to get out in a hurry or something.
Lee
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve seen similar. Luckily mine are 3 years apart and girls.
@Mnemosyne:
I heard it was in case of fire you don’t want synthetics to melt. Either way cargo pants fit the bill :)
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
I routinely carry thousands of dollars of camera gear with me on vacation. I don’t particularly trust the airlines to get it to my destination in one piece if I check it. Musicians feel the same way about their instruments. Until the airlines are capable of taking care of expensive, fragile, easily fenced luggage, there will be a need for carry ons.
jehrler
@catclub:
Here are some pics of the aft cabin taken by the NTSB.
https://twitter.com/NTSB/status/354002637240270848/photo/1
https://twitter.com/NTSB/status/354002389096886272/photo/1
Notice how the seats have moved and the floor seems to have buckled. Picture passengers in almost all the seats and you tell me where/how you are going to get aisle blocking carry ons to window seats without hitting/blocking other passengers.
mistermix
@jehrler: Carry-on baggage being carried out by passengers, that didn’t fall on the floor because bins opened, is a serious issue and was mentioned in the TSB Canada report on the Toronto crash I mentioned.
http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2005/a05h0002/a05h0002.pdf
The safety recommendation from the board was to add the instruction not to take carry-on luggage in case of an evacuation as part of a safety briefing.
Roger Moore
@Lee:
Or burn, which some kinds are prone to doing. Although, come to think of it, those kinds are mostly used for tops rather than pants.
jehrler
@mistermix:
Totally agree. But let’s wait for the NTSB to tell us if it was an issue in this accident.
Given the ground loop and the spinal injuries (and the buckled floor and seats) this was a much more severe vertical impact then Toronto. That alone would imply more potential spilled carry ons blocking egress and maybe a more rational reason for photos of pax with bags exiting.
joes527
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Just don’t go live on a bus in the middle of the wilderness. That ends badly.
satby
As a person who has to fly all the time, and as a former EMT who had to beg people to exit a burning hotel without stopping to dress or “just get their stuff”, let me just say people are assholes. Selfish, stupid, don’t give a fuck about other people as long as they and their shit are fine assholes.
Explains plane evacuations AND our current politics.
Azabow
So in the “Miracle in Toronto”, everyone was carrying their stuff and taking pictures. How many fatalities did that foolishness cause?
“…all on board survived a runway overrun and crash into a ravine and post-crash fire.”
Oh. I see.
Punchy
No fuckin way Im leaving my shit on the plane when I can easily grab it and go. Who the hell is going to replace my $1200 lappy, $500 phone, and DL and passport? Yeah, if Im trying to evac a giant carnival jackalope, the rub’s on me. Otherwise Pilot Smith, go eff yerself.
Lee
@mistermix:
If I were a passenger behind this person, they would get run the fuck over as I was exiting.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I’m sure you heard all about it at the time, but there was a horrific lab accident at UCLA a few years ago where the grad student working in the lab forgot that the sweater she was wearing that day was synthetic. She died in the burn unit a week later.
Eric U.
they were landing, people were already thinking about getting their carry-on and getting off the plane.
Every time I fly, I wish death and dismemberment on the MBA that first decided they should charge for baggage instead of carrying it free like they used to do.
In our podunk airport, at least one of the airlines delays everyone from getting off the plane so they can retrieve the carry-on bags that were too big to go on the plane.
Origuy
@joes527:
The rule about the seat and tray are so that the people in the outer seats can get to the aisle quickly. Every second counts.
joes527
@satby: I was in a hotel where the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, and yes, I stopped to dress before hitting the stairs.
It was -20 something degrees outside at the time, so I was more at risk of freezing than burning.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
It’s like herding cats. A planeload of Tunches. Can you imagine such a thing?
Damn, now I need a belt of scotch…
jehrler
@Eric U.:
Amen! One of the reasons I nearly always fly Southwest.
Meg
@TooManyJens: If you actually look at some of the photos, you will know Smith did not mean some purses or laptops. Lots of people were heaving their luggages. It took quite some effort to drag them in the small aisles when people were madly trying to evacuate.
satby
….and of course Punchy followed up my comment and proved my point.
What they have to do is start arresting the people who endanger others by that behavior (and every fireman has met an idiot like that). I don’t say that lightly, but having to be the person nearly dying for some of these morons and their crap makes me cranky every time I think about it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Eric U.:
Why restrict it to when you fly? Why restrict it to MBAs who work for airlines?
RaflW
@Mandalay:
The baggage charges are here to stay. For two reasons: 1. they make boatloads of money and 2. less baggage in the hold is more space to sell for freight ops.
Only Southwest differs, because they aim for 25 minute turnarounds at the gate. Tons of carryons screws that up. Their unusual economics means less air freight, but a higher aircraft utilization rate. These days I notice a lot of Delta flights that sit for an hour at the gate, so they don’t care about speed of enplaning or unloading. Pack ’em in!
Oh, yeah, and Spirit (I think that’s the one) charges for carry ons. And every other discrete item. Like printing a boarding pass. I hope to never fly them.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
I notice that you didn’t claim that it is possible to have a very serious accident where everybody survives. If everybody survives how can it be “very serious”?
Again, the problem is that the NTSB wants to incorporate accidents with no deaths arising when calculating the survival rate for serious accidents, where they also get to decide what constitutes a “serious” accident.
It would be a much more reasonable and honest approach to only include those accidents where at least one death resulted when calculating the survival rate.
Plane accidents where nobody dies are a step down from plane accidents where people die.
satby
@joes527: See, first responders carry the stuff to cover you up… we call them blankets. And the Red Cross and Salavation Army also show up and have more blankets when the weather indicates a need.
But hey, whatever… I don’t do that anymore. Because I saw myself starting to think I’d just let fuckers burn if they were going to be that stupid.
So I changed careers before I completely lost myself. Still, it seems it causes flashbacks to hear about the assholish behaviors again.
catclub
@jehrler: As soon as SOME people get off, their seat areas are available to throw luggage there, rather than carry it out along the aisle.
If the aisle between me and the exit is clear of people, but still has baggage, then the seats on either side of the aisle also have no people in them. Baggage can go there.
I still think that no one carried off a bag that belonged to someone else, unless by confusion.
Mandalay
@RaflW:
Ah, I did not know that.
Samoa Air has an interesting business model…they weigh the passengers as well as the luggage.
joes527
@Origuy: From what we know (which is unquestionably incomplete) by and large those who were not injured/killed by the impact (or the fire truck running over them) were able to get out.
I get the “every second counts” mantra, but in this particular case, all that seems to matter is who got stuck with the seats in the back of the plane. There is no indication (yet?) that tray tables or saving-your-carry-on-luggage hurt _anyone_.
I’m not saying that there might not be a situation where every second counts, but from the descriptions available, this wasn’t one of those situations. And I’m not saying that passengers should be grabbing their carry ons (or even deciding for themselves how “serious” an emergency is) I’m just noting that this particular situation doesn’t seem to justify _any_ of the emergency rules/procedures. (unless you add “for the love of god — don’t sit in the back of the plane!” to the safety briefing.)
Punchy
@satby: Last time I checked, grabbing a backpack full of irreplaceable gear takes 0.0737 milliseconds longer than dropping it. Pardon my assholeness for delaying you those 73.7 usec.
jehrler
@catclub:
But if you start filling aisle seats with bags (as aisle seats would be the first to be vacated) then the interior/window seat passengers have to contend with getting by them. And, as the photos I linked to showed, seats can deform and block the row so pax have to climb over the seats to exit…something much more difficult to do if it is full of carry ons.
Again, if the pax were jerks then ok, but let’s wait for the NTSB to tell us that rather than just assuming it.
Elizabelle
Disgusted how much ABC TV sensationalized the initial coverage.
Caught a glimpse of David Muir informing us Saturday evening that “60 passengers are not accounted for”, in grave, grave tones, when it was highly likely those passengers were strolling around SFO, having exited the plane.
Don’t rely on the American networks for my news coverage, and that report says why in a nutshell.
RaflW
@jehrler:
The NYT article reports from eyewitnesses saying that pax in business/first calmly collected their bags and exited the plane. Now, they apparently were the least injured and didn’t really know about the chaos in the back. They also have wider aisles and many fewer pax per square meter than in cattle-car. So maybe it’s not crazy to do what they did. But it still is not at all the recommended action to take your bags in an emergency evac.
If for no other reason than that you really should run away from a plane that you’ve just left that has crashed and is on fire! It didn’t fireball. But it could have.
Shakezula
@jehrler:
Exactly. He demonstrates another human flaw: The inability to keep quiet when asked for an expert opinion. (But it still hacks me off.)
mistermix
@Azabow: There were a number of survivors treated for smoke inhalation, including a 9 month-old infant. Because the plane was on fire during the evacuation.
sparrow
@Laur: The pilot was not “in training”, he was an experienced FO who had recently converted from a different type of aircraft (I saw somewhere 747) to the 777. That is NOT the same thing as someone who doesn’t know what they are doing… jeez.
joes527
@satby: See, first responders carry the stuff to cover you up… we call them blankets.
I was dressed, down the stairs and out in the -20 something degrees for 5 minutes before the first responders arrived. I didn’t see them bring the truckload of blankets that it would have required to cover a hotel full of people running out into the night incompletely dressed. And when they did arrive, they completely ignored the folks standing outside until they had determined that it was a false alarm. (another 10-15 minutes)
-20 something is actually pretty cold to be standing around for even 20 minutes w/o clothes.
sparrow
@Skynyrd Nimoy: And if the 20 seconds you spend fiddling with your overhead luggage compartment means someone dies of smoke inhalation in the back, I will beat you to death with your f&&cking macbook, k?
catclub
@jehrler: Purposeful misunderstanding of what I wrote.
Aisle empty in front of me means people in window seats in front of me have also exited.
Again: tell me how many people carried OTHER PEOPLE’S carry-on luggage out of the plane, to helpfully unblock the aisles. I am still predicting zero.
RaflW
@Mandalay:
I think you’re quite wrong. Ditching a fully loaded A320, dead-stick without flipping or cartwheeling the plane on contact with the water is, from what I understand, no easy trick at all.
Redshirt
I’ve been in two plane crashes – each of them basically the same: An engine(s) blew on take off before we got in the air, causing the plane to skid off the runway. Some people freaked out, most remained calm. The few who freaked out though can be contagious.
In the first crash, I was exiting right behind a Catholic priest, and he was ashen, and shaking, and bummed a cigarette off me, his hands shaking like crazy. That kind of freaked me out – like, why are you so scared, Priest? Aren’t you right with Jesus?
satby
@sparrow: Word
joes527
@Redshirt:
Can you post your travel plans here so I can be sure not to get on a plane with you? The likelihood of a non-stunt-pilot being in 2 crashes has got to be …. fairly small. You are like the guy who gets hit by lightning multiple times.
jon
@Laur: Having your stuff on your body is practical. Ugly? Who the fuck cares? If I wanted to look pretty, I’d be naked. Clothing that isn’t practical (meaning the stuff I put on to avoid arrest, injury, sunburn, public health concerns, or job loss) isn’t worth putting on, whether traveling or going outside to get the morning paper.
And if you don’t like cargo pants, get a bag you wear that doesn’t obstruct your ability to use your arms. Good for handling your luggage, getting your keys out, whatever. There are alternatives to needing a big bag.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshirt:
Obviously, he hadn’t taken the drugs himself. He just pushes them.
Elizabelle
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Odd comment about moving to Alaska after an air crash. Because you’d be more dependent on aviation to get around than in the lower 48.
Alaska just had a crash yesterday that killed ten; single engine Otter owned by an air taxi service. On takeoff. No witnesses, so far.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/08/196019/air-taxi-crashes-at-alaskan-airport.html#.UdrpVuDFVaU
Redshirt
@joes527: That’s just the tip of the disaster iceberg too! And yet, to date, I walk unscathed. Cursed, but blessed? Or blessed, but cursed? I can never make up my mind.
The second crash was almost fun – in Alice Springs, Australia. A flock of cockatoo parrots got sucked into the engine and BOOM! Then spent 10 hours at the empty airport waiting for the next plane. The Australians turned it into a pretty good party, of course.
jehrler
@catclub:
I saw what you wrote and didn’t think it made any sense. Still don’t.
In an emergency evacuation the passengers are not likely to queue up to let the entire row in front of them move into the aisle. Therefore you are not going to have rows of empty seats to toss bags into.
Rather, aisle seat pax are going to immediately step into the aisle and then it is very likely going to be pushing/shoving row by row as those in the aisle try to get past each row and those in each row try and get into the aisle.
Did pax take others’ carry ons to free the aisle? Don’t know and neither do you until the NTSB tells us.
Redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, that is a rule for drug dealers – don’t sample your own product.
The Other Chuck
@Punchy: Okay Flash, you get an exception, as does anyone else who can demonstrate that kind of superhuman speed. Those of you who come from this planet or weren’t involved in cosmic radiation superpower-granting, leave your fucking pack.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Then you’re obviously a courier for the cocaine lords of Colombia…or for the graft lords of Halliburton. You deserve to die.
OK, screw that guy from Cleveland behind me, the puppies come first!
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshirt:
Damn, that sounds like fun, actually. A memorable experience on several levels.
Mandalay
@RaflW:
Probably so, but I said nothing about the difficulty of landing the plane. Perhaps the pilot was one in a million, or perhaps most other pilots would also have landed the plane successfully. Who really knows?
My larger point was that the ultimate outcome was that nobody died in that accident, so it should not be used when calculating survival rates for accidents when people die.
John M. Burt
@Laur: “the chances that you are actually going to be in a crash or emergency are incredibly low so dressing specifically for the purpose of getting away as fast as possible is dumb.”
For cryin’ out sake, Laur, we’re not talking about wearing a life vest and crash helmet to walk to the store, we’re talking about sensible precautions that are no great inconvenience but could save hundreds of lives.
In every CPR class I take, I am usually the only person present who has actually taken part in an emergency, but I am ALWAYS glad to take my yearly renewal class.
And I always wear a web belt, because you never know when you’re going to need a tourniquet.
Redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: It was a Qantas flight, and despite it being late at night, they brought in dozens of pizzas and cases of beer. They made the best of a bad situation.
Australians are the best.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, yes, we hear about it regularly. The felony charges against her boss have certainly gotten everyone’s attention. Our institution is seriously considering replacing our current lab coats with Nomex ones for better fire resistance, partly as a response to that incident.
FWIW, I think criminal charges are certainly warranted against both her boss and the school. The whole incident was a series of safety failures that reflect a grossly unsafe environment. She given inadequate training and supervision, and it sounds to me as if she was being asked to use techniques that were inappropriate for the chemicals she was working with. Her coworkers failed to get her to a nearby safety shower that probably would have saved her life, which reflects poor general safety training. All of that is the boss’s legal responsibility, as much in a University lab as in any business.
Mandalay
@Redshirt:
I think you answered your own question.
joes527
@Redshirt:
If this had happened in the US, they probably would have given you a voucher that could be used in the food court (when it opened the next morning)
Forum Transmitted Disease
I was raised by a commercial pilot. He retired from passenger duty in 2004, still works as an instructor.
The comments defending those who pulled their baggage out are the reason that both he and I fly as little as possible. Airline procedures are designed and proven to lessen fatalities. You folks are saying “fuck that noise”.
Keep ignoring the rules and you’ll get the libertarian flying paradise you all long for. The carriers couldn’t be happier, they’ve been fighting safety regs since the start of the industry, and recently it seems most of the passengers have decided to join in on their side.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
Religious belief doesn’t necessarily turn off the adrenal glands.
RaflW
@Mandalay:
Again, I disagree. The standard should be hull loss. If the plane is damaged enough to be a total write-off, and everyone walked away alive, then its still major in my book, like this Continental 737 takeoff crash that looks terrifying and majorly destroyed the plane. Most likely quite major for the people on board!
But by definition, you’ve already stated that your standard is “accidents when people die” so your universe of accidents disallows serious, life-threatening but not life-ending accidents. Which I think it is most reasonable to call major.
(Only exception for my suggested criteria is hull loss with no pax, which has happened in moronic groundhandling incidents).
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
It’s not uncommon for people to die of heart attacks and the like after a crash that’s otherwise not very serious, which technically makes them fatal accidents. Frankly, more people easily could have died in this Asiana Airlines crash, and it’s a tribute to the flight attendants and other crew that they were able to get them off the plane as quickly and safely as they did.
I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but the friggin’ tail of the airplane fell off and the plane caught fire. That’s a serious accident in anyone’s book.
Redshirt
@Roger Moore: I’ve always assumed that a man who’s spent the better part of his life contemplating the mysteries of life and death, and counseling many others on the same, would respond better in an emergency situation. Not the case!
satby
@Forum Transmitted Disease: double word, and thanks.
Some of the amazing humans on this blog, who have 20/20 hindsight before the event unfolds all are such special snowflakes; and nothing they ever do could possibly be wrong, because they just KNOW situations aren’t really that serious when they personally are involved. Because really, what bad things could happen to them? We should have them wear signs or something, so we can all be on their planes and in their hotels, and always be safe because all the alarms will always be false.
Mandalay
@RaflW:
Well your definition is also contradicting the NTSB definition. There might have been an external fire (e.g. from the landing gear, or a wing engine) that did not result in any hull loss, or loss of life, yet the NTSB could still consider that a “serious accident”.
The NTSB is free to classify accidents as they see fit. But it is dishonest and self-serving of them to cite survival rates for what they choose to deem to be “serious” accidents, when they selectively include accidents where nobody died.
By analogy, we don’t include victims who “almost died”, or were “lucky to be alive”, or “were very seriously wounded”, when calculating murder rates. We only consider cases where people died. So I don’t see how the NTSB can reasonably count accidents where nobody died when determining survival rates in plane accidents.
Laur
@Mnemosyne: If you are a middle-aged guy, wearing cargo pants is no big deal. If you are anyone else, however….
liberal
@Mandalay:
IMHO checked baggage should be free or cheap, and carry ons that won’t fit under the seat should be expensive.
I’m so f*cking sick of waiting for idiots to wrangle their oversized carry-ons in and out of the bins while boarding/deplaning I could kill someone. I especially despise unathletic people who take extra time because they’re not strong enough to do it quickly. If you can’t do it, check it—don’t waste my goddamn time, you selfish a-hole.
Mandalay
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
You just won the thread.
Mnemosyne
@Laur:
I’m a middle-aged woman. However, I’m an inverted triangle, not a pear shape, so cargo pants don’t add any bulk to my lower half.
If junk in the trunk is the concern, why not a cargo skirt? Royal Robbins has some decent-looking ones and the cargo pocket is big enough for an iPhone.
joes527
@satby: Your comment was interesting. In the example I cited above, when the alarm went off, I had no idea whether it was a false alarm, bomb threat, small fire, or major fire.
I _did_ know that the conditions outside (below -20 degrees) were potentially life threatening to anyone insufficiently dressed.
But evidently I should have just hurled myself into the night trusting that something good would happen.
If there was a fire alarm on a ship, would you wait for a life boat, or just jump overboard? (remember, seconds count!)
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
I’m sorry, but this still seems like a weird standard. Let’s say there are two similar accidents that have identical causes, but 5 people die in one and no one dies in the other. We really can’t look at the non-fatal accident to determine the survival rate for that type of accident? Aren’t you skewing the numbers by only looking at fatalities and not at the type of accident?
Mnemosyne
Regarding the luggage situation, I’m sometimes tempted to ship my stuff via UPS instead. If I pack it right and don’t use the heavy suitcase, it would probably end up being cheaper than the $50 round trip I have to pay for most airlines.
Mandalay
@liberal:
This.
Poe’s Law rulez!
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore:
Our industiral lab commonly handles the material (and most of its cousins) that lead to that fatal fire. We wear Nomex as a matter of course, coats as well as balacava, along with faceshields and chem resistant gloves – and have carts of dry powder agent (in our case, lime) on hand whenever we transfer the materials.
A colleague from our facility was actually engaged to do a safety review on the handling of the material. Yes, the technique she was taught to use was totally inappropriate and unfortunately contributed directly to the accident. The failure to employ the deluge shower was just inexplicable. Yes, its going to be cold and probably nasty for the first few seconds until the lines flush, but fuck if it won’t drown the fire (hence the name deluge).
Trollhattan
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Will just add that the airlines, by steering passengers towards all carryon, all the time through whopping big checked bag fees helped worsen the problem of folks wanting to haul their shit off the airplane with them.
In a more “typical” crash-landing situation than Saturday, the passengers would have been briefed ahead of time but in this case there was evidently a whopping seven seconds between the crew recognizing there was a problem and the plane hitting the ground. I remain flabbergasted that everybody still on the plane when it came to rest is alive. They cllearly did a lot of the right things to get folks off, including a lot of people with grave injuries.
A pilot with fewer than fifty hours at the controls of a 777 is not how I’d run an airline.
Lee
@Mnemosyne:
I too just considered this. We just completed a 10 day trip. Luckily I used miles for my kids so they each got 2 bags for free. I think we ended up paying for 1 extra bag.
I did a bit of research and most hotels (or at least the ones I stayed at) now have policies about accepting UPS’d bags (you have to have a reservation).
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
And people have died from being clobbered on the head by luggage that has shifted, even in flights that have been otherwise uneventful. Fatalities just aren’t a good measure of the severity of an accident.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
But they aren’t selectively including those incidents. They’re coming up with an objective definition of seriousness and letting the chips fall where they may. That’s the right way of handling things. If you define seriousness in terms of fatalities, you wind up filtering out accidents where safety measures successfully prevented any loss of life. If one of your goals is to come up with better safety standards- which is the case for the NTSB- you’re better off defining it in terms of what happens to the plane and seeing how well the passengers fare.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Half a lifetime ago had a job in a steel mill “melt shop” and the rule was cotton or wool–nothing else.
Have had quite a few expen$ive technical outdoor garments with campfire ember holes burned into them (Take THAT, Mister GORE!) and have had bicycle crashes where I slid and burned the fabric pattern into my skin. These, I must say, are very bad not fun injuries but limited in area. Can’t imagine a full conflagration.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
Oh, it’s explicable all right, just not excusable. What happened was that her coworkers panicked and did the first thing they could think of. It’s what most people do when something terrible happens. It requires training and drill to get people to do otherwise, which is why people who work with dangerous situations are supposed to be trained and drilled with the correct procedures. That they weren’t is part of what makes this a criminal case rather than just a tragic accident.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
Maybe not for determining the severity of an accident with respect to the plane itself, but they are everything when citing survival rates.
By all means cite survival rates for all flights, or only those flights which have fatalities. Those are criteria which people can readily understand, and answer the meaningful questions:
– How likely am I to die/survive as a result of flying?
– How likely am I to die/survive if I am on a flight that resulted in passenger death(s)?
But what the NTSB is answering is this question:
– How likely am I to die/survive as a result of flying if the NTSB deem that a “serious” accident occurred? For public consumption, both the question and the answer are meaningless.
We don’t selectively include/exclude “almost” cases when determining murder rates, or suicide rates, or car fatalities; it would be absurd. Yet that it is exactly what the NTSB does when citing survival rates, by selectively including some (but not all) non-fatal accidents.
As Pauli would say, it’s not even wrong.
Mnemosyne
@Trollhattan:
Fun fact I learned: wool is self-extinguishing. That is, it will burn when a flame is actively held to it, but if you remove the flame, the fire goes out. This is why I’ve been making baby sweaters and blankets from wool even though synthetics are way cheaper.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Except that the NTSB does look at car accidents in exactly the way you describe: they look at the type of accident and the type of car you’re in and predict how likely it is that you will die in that kind of accident while riding in or driving that type of car. The gross “X number of people died in car accidents” number is basically useless for telling you how safe your particular car is or how likely you are to survive a particular kind of accident.
The number you want is “X number of people die in airline accidents every year,” but that’s a completely useless number when it comes to preventing future accidents, which is what the NTSB is supposed to be doing.
ETA: Here’s a link to the NTSB’s transportation safety studies. Note that they examine specific kinds of accidents and the results rather than throwing all fatal car accidents into a big bucket.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
From the NTSB’s summary of the “Survivability of Accidents” report:
So, again, the NTSB has a completely different purpose in writing the report than what you’re assuming.
RaflW
@Mandalay: Did you actually read the CO crash in Denver?
Hull loss. Two critical injuries + many others. Plane skidded off the runway at over 100mph, and was shortly in flames sufficient to bar exit from one side of the craft.
I have no idea why you are so dug in about this. A fucking airliner that breaks apart in a 40 foot deep ditch, is on fire, and has to be evacuated by all and requires multiple hospitalizations indulging two deemed critical is g*d damned serious.
But because no one died, you’ve determined that it doesn’t count as a statistic for figuring airline survival rates? Whatever. Your standards are strange and really should apply only to you.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I think you’re flat wrong. What people are worried about is not how likely they are to die if they’re in an accident that results in at least one fatality. They’re worried about how likely they are to die or be severely injured if their plane crashes. For that, the NTSB definition of a severe accident- basically one that badly messes up the plane- is much closer to the layman’s concept of a plane crash than your requirement of at least one fatality.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
Correct, and that is a good thing. We should focus on the deaths, their causes, and how to prevent them in future rather than basking over the good work done in the past.
Now as a practical matter I am sure that the NTSB really do slice and dice the numbers with the goal of improving air safety. My bone of contention is that they are putting out a highly misleading statistic to the public: “Even in the most serious class of crashes, more than 76 percent survive”.
Well that is only true because they are deciding what constitutes “the most serious class of crashes”, some of which have no fatalities, and some of which aren’t even “crashes” according to their own definition!
RaflW
@Trollhattan:
He had nearly 10,000 total hours including lots of hours piloting 747s into SFO previously.
The way you get captains to have enough hours to land at SFO in a new type is to … land at SFO in the new type. The weather was good. It was a pretty standard daytime visual approach. An experienced training pilot with 1,000s of hours in a 777 was in the right seat.
This should have been a creampuff landing. Had there been fog, serious crosswinds, etc, I’d hope to g*d that the guy in the right seat with 1,000s of 777 hours was landing, and the captain who was type-transitioning would have assisted (and observed). But in that weather and setting, it’s fairly routine for the more junior pilot to be the pilot flying. That’s how junior officers become experienced sr officers. Lots of landings in good weather with an experienced guy assisting.
So, it is fairly routine for an experienced captain who’s upgrading to the top aircraft in their fleet to have a first-landing in a series of major international airports. That’s how training and pilot upgrading work.
RaflW
@Mandalay:
Gee, I disagree again!
The NTSB also looks at injuries, because there are many outcomes in between dead and glowing in self-congratulations.
Having your neck or back broken but not dying in a crash pretty much sucks shit. As does having your legs crushed in a collapsed airplane seat. Or any of myriad non-fatal but horrible and disfiguring injuries.
satby
@joes527: God, you’re an ass. So fine, you’re a genius and we’re all thankful that you didn’t freeze to death due to your careful risk assesment.
And the point is not to “abandon ship” in an emergency; it’s to folllow the procedures that emergency personnel attempting to save your worthless hide need you to follow. So in fires, that means exit (and not via elevators and not with all your shit). On a boat there are different procedures and drills so everyone knows what those procedures are. And you still don’t get to bring your luggage. And if you decide the water might be too cold, and you need to dress warmer you may miss the last lifeboat off. And what a tragedy that would be.
Mandalay
@RaflW: Fair enough. My wording/emphasis was poor, but I did state that “as a practical matter I am sure that the NTSB really do slice and dice the numbers with the goal of improving air safety”.
I didn’t mean to suggest that injuries don’t matter, and I have no reason to believe that the NTSB aren’t doing an excellent job overall.
ricky
Reckless Speculation? So has Alex Jones weighed in?
How about Pammy Geller? Were any of those Ko-Reans
Ko-Ran readers?
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
Well it’s not just me; planecrashinfo thought it was a meaningful number to cite (“Odds of being on an airline flight which results in at least one fatality@RaflW: “).
PhoenixRising
This is what scared me:
So, um, yeah. Noon, beautiful summer day…under what conditions might this pilot have been able to get experience on the required (albeit complex) approach at SFO that were lower risk for his passengers?
There were 4 pilots, and until it was too late no one called for a second lap (I don’t know what that’s called, but I fly enough to know that if you’re coming down wrong you make a lap & line up again).
Passenger behavior is a red herring; the causal factors were in the cockpit, and 777s are so damn huge that the folks strolling away with their carry-ons may well have not been aware that the back of the plane was smoking. Common sense ought to have told them to run like bunnies, but an evac with 2 deaths is a huge success and the crew of that flight deserves promotion.
The captain, OTOH…
ETA: And I’m not a middle aged man, but I wear cargo pants when I travel. Avert your eyes while you struggle with your murse.
Interrobang
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Yeah, what FTD said, up to and including being raised by a commercial pilot. My dad retired about the same time.
Also, as a person with a minor but significant mobility disability, every second you assholes waste getting off cuts into my margin of survival, by which I mean that you make people like me have to move faster to get out in the prescribed 90 seconds. Carry your important shit on your body. If you aren’t already flying in garments with lots of pockets, I don’t know how you manage, to be honest.
Mandalay
@RaflW:
Correct, I think it doesn’t count because nobody died. Sure it was a dramatic and a major accident, but shouldn’t be used when determining the survivability rate. There are umpteen other accidents which might be far less dramatic than the one you cite which the NTSB also use to determining the survivability rate. You have to draw a line somewhere. You choose to do it based on hull damage, I choose to do it based on actual deaths, and the NTSB uses a variety of factors (including serious injury).
This cuts both ways though. If an old lady is on her way to the bathroom midway over the Atlantic and a bag falls from the overhead compartment on her head and kills her, then I consider that a fatality, as would the NTSB. But presumably you would not, since there was no hull damage, which makes no sense to me.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
I’m still not getting why you think comparing dissimilar fatal accidents would be more useful than comparing similar accidents where one had fatalities and the other didn’t. Should we be comparing this accident to American Airlines Flight 587 because both accidents had fatalities, or should we be comparing it to other accidents that took place during landing even if those accidents did not have fatalities?
Mandalay
@Interrobang:
This. The absence of self-awareness from some posters here who describe how they would look after #1 when the plane crashed is both revealing and chilling.
RaflW
@Mandalay:
Wow. OK.
But I maintain that a crash like the Denver one in 2008 might well have resulted in deaths 10 or 20 years earlier. It wasn’t that long ago that airplane seat frames were flimsy as shit because airlines wanted to save weight and the general reasoning was, your ass is dead in a crash, so why make seats stronger and “waste fuel”?
They also used to pack the rows around window exits and people were stuck inside planes to roast to death but the airlines were forced to create exit rows or omit the window seat so that people could actually remove the exits and GTFO the crashed plane.
So there are, y’know, reasons that a plane spectacularly failing to take off, veering at high speed into a ditch, bursting into flames and being totally destroyed didn’t take lives in 2008.
Because people care about major crashes that don’t just result in deaths, but survival.
Trollhattan
@RaflW:
What we’ll hopefully find out is why the engines were idled and the plane was dropping like a rock with no timely intervention from the more experienced pilot. Whatever their system is for this hands-on training, it appears to have completely failed.
RobNYNY1957
One reason that no one has mentioned is that people might have taken time to get their carry-on luggage is because they had nothing else to do while they waited for their turn to get off. It’s some bit of normal behavior that you might engage in while trying to retain your composure in an emergency.
Mandalay
@Phil:
While you have accurately cited a quote from Discovery’s web site, it is complete bullshit:
– The source of that claim is Discovery, not NTSB, and the claim is false.
– If you look at the NTSB data, the 76% survivability rate is only for “survivable” accidents, where this is the NTSB’s definition of “survivable”:
More bluntly, “survivable” means that there is some possibility, however remote, of surviving the crash! And the 76% survivability figure specifically excluded data for plane crashes where everyone died!
The misuse of the data was the fault of Discovery, not the NTSB, but your chance of surviving the “most serious class of crashes” is obviously less than 76%.
OT, but from that NTSB report, if you die in a plane crash it will almost certainly be due to impact or fire, and the most likely reason for the crash will be pilot error.
Mandalay
@RaflW:
No argument from me, and you obviously know a lot more about air safety than everyone else on the thread. All plane accidents are serious in varying degrees.
My only beef is the selection criteria used to determine which plane crashes should be used to determine the survival rate, and I still maintain that including crashes/accidents where nobody died give a falsely optimistic view. Of course there is a simple solution: present multiple survival rates that vary according to the definition of “serious” that is being used.
mclaren
Given the general quality of the commentariat, that’s the kind of behavior we can expect from all too many people on this site. Mnemosyne and burnspbesq and General Crackpot Fake Name and eemom and omnes omnibus would all do exactly that. They’d probably also ask the serial killer to hold their cellphone while they tidied up.
The elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top with these folks, let’s just put it that way.
Bubba Dave
@RaflW:
I flew Spirit from DFW to MSP a couple months back and it was actually a great experience. They charge more for carryons than for checked bags, so people carried on their free purse/laptop and checked the rest. Speedy boarding, speedy deboarding, and after all the nickeling and diming was over STILL half what American wanted for the flight. A++ would fly again.
Bill Aldrich
@Robert Sneddon: I agree that those attendants in the rear of the plane were unable to provide much assistance or leadership. However, I disagree with most in this discussion that ordinary folks can not act rationally in a crisis. Good examples are the 9/11 WTC and United Flt 92 that a few passengers forced to a crash landing in PA. Exceptions are many: street riots, gun battles, political deals, etc.
Maybe one solution is to encourage strongly that some people take simple weekend outdoor or survival courses. The pilots should be able, either personally, or recorded messages, or ground messages to the passengers to prepare folks before an imminent crash.,
However, pilot error a few seconds before the crash would not be quick enough, IMHO.
We should know more in the next few months what happened, should have happened, or might have happened given the number of variables in a major accident.
Bill Aldrich
@Skynyrd Nimoy: I was in a bus crash 2 years ago. The school,bus was traveling at 65 mph when the driver over-corrected after he paid too much attention on his GFS system. I was knocked out cold for 3 to 5 mintes. Someone pulled me from the bus. At no time did I think about my expensive bike, camera, and notebook.Maybe thas because I was in shock.
@Robert Sneddon: I agree that those attendants in the rear of the plane were unable to provide much assistance or leadership. However, I disagree with most in this discussion that ordinary folks can not act rationally in a crisis. Good examples are the 9/11 WTC and United Flt 92 that a few passengers forced to a crash landing in PA. Exceptions are many: street riots, gun battles, political deals, etc.
Maybe one solution is to encourage strongly that some people take simple weekend outdoor or survival courses. The pilots should be able, either personally, or recorded messages, or ground messages to the passengers to prepare folks before an imminent crash.,
However, pilot error a few seconds before the crash would not be quick enough, IMHO.
We should know more in the next few months what happened, should have happened, or might have happened given the number of variables in a major accident.
Laur
@jon: Like I said, you, as a middle aged man, probably don’t care about what you wear. The rest of the world, however, 99.99999999% don’t dress for going to the airport with the idea in mind that we might be in a fiery plane crash and need to evacuate as soon as possible so our clothes don’t melt to our bodies.
Laur
@John M. Burt: A web belt (never heard of one) cause you never know when you’re going to be in a tourniquet?
I’m a 28 year old woman. I’m not going to get on a plane wearing a tourniquet belt and cargo pants. Just…no.