Because after you survive the crash, you need to survive the aftermath, and modern air travellers know better than to trust government and airline officials with their welfare, that’s why.
Because after you survive the crash, you need to survive the aftermath, and modern air travellers know better than to trust government and airline officials with their welfare, that’s why.
Can you imagine having to “prove” you were onboard a flamed out aircraft? Firstly to the airline company, and then to the gov’t at hand? If your “id” is inside your carry on luggage, how do you prove it in order to access the luggage pick up area? It has the potential for gov’t to show what it’s worst at.
Anyone that’s picked up a child from summer camp after that child has been dropped off at camp by their spouse will know what I’m talking about…
Well, if someone dragging a suitcase got in my way evacuating a burning aircraft, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be in my way very long.
Not that I’d get on one of those complicated contraptions anyway. Talk about random hitch hikers. If I can’t carry protection, I’m not going.
When flying combat msns out of DaNang we were supposed to strip ourselves of all id features save dog-tags to the enemy couldn’t gain add. info if shot down and taken prisoner. However many of us nevertheless disobeyed and carried our Air Force ID card and US greenbacks along (figuring our dog-tags had same basic info as the ID card) in case we got diverted to another base because of wx or cmbt damage. Have you ever tried to get something to eat or a room (in our case at the O-Club or VOQ–Visiting Officers quarters) w.o. an ID or money? I can sympathize..
Used to travel quite a bit for business and while I carried my laptop and other electronics onboard, I always made sure that the important stuff — the data — was stashed on a server somewhere. All my personal papers fit into my wallet or a pocket, so there’d be no need or temptation to grab a bag if we had to bug out of the aircraft.
Favourite airport of all time was Ben Gurion — all of the security staff there were rather attractive young women. I was hoping to get frisked, but it did not happen. I should have acted more suspicious or something.
The way things are with the US bureaucracy, if your ID were to burn up in the airplane, Immigration and Customs would detain you and then hand you over to the DHS as a possible terrorist. Unless you’re a Muslim of course.
Perhaps hey figured the humiliation they were submitted to to get the bag on the plain made it more valuable to them –
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/leviathans-minions-always-making-bad-situations-far-worse-ii/
“Certainly now that airlines and the FAA are clearly on notice that survivable accidents could be imperiled by passengers wasting time collecting their bags, they need to take action to address this issue before anyone needlessly dies in a survivable accident.”
Yes, what this calls for is more regulation. Why not just outlaw airplane accidents?
My passport and my money, I’m taking those things with me, especially if I’m in a foreign country. If they’re under my seat by my feet (and they usually are), I’m taking those with me. However, if it’s in the overhead and you’re holding up the line waiting to get it, you best be ready to be pushed aside.
This topic came up on several pro pilot fora, and the consensus was “good frickin’ luck!” with that. Most pilots also said that if they were in the passenger’s position they’d do the exact same thing. Heck, airports can’t find your bags after a normal landing, what chance would you have with a crash landing? Besides, contents not going to be worth much after the firetruck has pumped it full of foam.
Anybody slowing themselves up carrying things should be run over. And would be, if it were me.
Nobody knew if there was an explosion waiting to happen. There never a shortage of idiots in any situation.
God bless and keep you, Kate, as He kept the people who were spared death the plane on Saturday—and may the pilot with the blood of the two that weren’t spared on his hands burn in hell for all eternity—but sorry, no.
Anything you truly cannot afford to lose (namely travel ID, credit cards and proof of travel health insurance) should already fit in a shirt pocket or a wallet small enough to fit in your trousers or jacket. That includes medication. (If you need a cocktail of pills and potions to get through the day, you’re probably too sick to be traveling if you have any choice.) When I travel, my passport ranks in my affections only below God, the Queen and my wife, and as such remains next to my heart. If you wear neither trousers or a jacket, your IDs and cards should fit in a purse that ties around your waist.
Either way your IDs should remain on your person for the duration of the flight, so you can take your life, as it were, off the plane in an emergency (assuming it pleased God to let you reach the ground alive) without wasting time fumbling for a huge handbag. Anything else can be replaced at an appropriate time.
While we’re on the subject? Anybody who finds himself on a plane on fire and grab his bag full of toys before he grabs his own flesh and blood and gets the child far away deserves to burn to ash with the plane, as a foretaste of what he has in store for him below.
Stradivarius: I see what you mean, but bringing all the firepower in the world on the plane won’t save you from a lazy, drunken, clumsy, negligent or simply incompetent pilot or air traffic controller or ground crewman whose sloppiness makes the plane fall out of the sky or crash into a mountain—never mind a saboteur on the ground.
Shows that the TSA is feared more than impending death by fire. The real panic would be to survive, unhurt and then realize your passport and other ID is still on the plane. Now you have to face those people in the airport. The horror.
I always have my bag with me when I travel, just where I can get it. That’s just common sense. If someone was reaching for their souvenirs, well- that’s just stupid.
And people can be completely disgusting. Like this article I just read. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4401811,00.html
It probably relates to people in crisis falling back on habitual behavior. Since most people getting off an aircraft grab their carry-on luggage and then exit the aircraft many would unthinkingly repeat the behavior. Then there are the people who have the situational awareness of jellyfish and are capable of thinking only of themselves and their own little piece of space and have no clue nor care not a whit how their behavior will impact others. They’re typically the ones with upteen pieces of carry-on luggage who fill innumerable overhead bins with oversized, overweight, baggage and never seem to get filtered out at the departure gate. And there’s no shortage of those types.
Harks back to the last time I flew through Calgary. Our flight was late, so the cabin crew advised those without the immediate connecting flight to remain seated and those of us with five minutes to make the next gate to exit the aircraft. A stupid woman in business class immediately jumped out of her seat and stretched in the aisle while loudly proclaiming that she now had to wait to disembark. She was nearly trampled in the rush, and deservedly so! You can’t fix stupid. Luckily she didn’t have time to go for her overnight bag…
Incidentally, there are now reports that one of the fatalities in the Asiana crash was run over by an emergency vehicle. That will complicate the lawsuit.
“I’d Grab My Purse, Too”
And if I was on the aircraft, you’d find my foot firmly planted in your ass as I hightailed it over you and your stupid purse with my kid to escape the flames. Once again, you show how screwed up your priorities are.
“Most pilots also said that if they were in the passenger’s position they’d do the exact same thing. Heck, airports can’t find your bags after a normal landing, what chance would you have with a crash landing? Besides, contents not going to be worth much after the firetruck has pumped it full of foam.”
So you would risk your own life, and those of others, just so you don’t have to go through some bureaucracy, or god forbid, have to replace your credit cards? If just 60 people took .25 seconds to look for their bags, that’s 15 seconds, more than enough for the whole plane to be engulfed in flames. You are so dangerously stupid, you shouldn’t even be allowed to drive a car.
actually if 60 people take .25 seconds, it’s .25 seconds.
John’s the guy trampling toddlers on his panicked way out.
John will be the guy trying to get his third carry-on bag out of the overhead while standing on some old lady. I see John’s type a lot on airplanes, they get the stare-down from me every time they try to crush past the oldsters at the front of the plane. Sometimes an elbow. I look forward to it on every flight.
Dr.D has it right of course, in an emergency situation people fall back on their training. Air travelers are trained to get their bags out of the overhead when the plane stops. They will do it if the plane is sinking in the water. They have to be screamed at by the aircrew “LEAVE THE BAG!!! GET OUT!!!” before survival instinct will sink in. I have seen this. Its a phenomenon also mentioned quite a bit in the safety literature.
In addition, people don’t react to what -will- happen. They react to what -is- happening. That there might be a fire soon won’t get most people’s attention. Only a real fire so close you can feel your hair curl up will get their attention. I have seen this, with real fire, but not on an airplane.
Then there are the ones who freeze, and the ones who panic. Either type are a menace. The frozen ones will stand and stare at oncoming doom like a deer looking at a bus. They will not move until they feel physical pain. The panickers will explode in a frenzy of undirected motion and howling, likely as not they will be moving away from safety. Saw that at car accidents a couple times too.
Having noticed these things, I always, and I mean -always- know where the exits are, I know where all my crap is, and if possible I’m wearing not carrying it. There’s nothing in my carry-on I can’t afford to lose, and I’ve tried to train myself to maintain my chill when it all hits the fan. When flying it can also be useful to do a check on the people surrounding you and try to sort out the freezers, panickers, John-type @$$h0l3s and the comparatively few people who look like they might be some use in an emergency.
Because you never know, do you? I’m not a cop or a fireman, and I’ve already seen quite a bit of chaos and emergency in my life. After the first time it all hits the fan you learn pretty quick who you can help and who you abandon to Fate.
John, please seek psychiatric care, now. You are emotionally unstable, categorically so.
You have no idea who you are talking to, what I am capable of, what I am trained, and or experienced in, or the dangers I have confronted in my life. I have held broken children in my arms. Brought the closure of death to families with lost members, ran to the fire, literally, while others were running away. I have faced death in laboratories with pathogens so deadly, there is no cure, only the long wait until your turn comes, as it did one of my colleagues. Every day, I deal with people and families in crisis.
Please seek psychiatric help, you need it, and that’s my experience talking.
Now, as you’re running by me in the stricken plane, take a moment and bend down and kiss my ass, and thank God I don’t deck you where you stand. What a maroon.
John has a kid??
Well, heaven help the poor little wretch!
One guy should have grabbed a reflective vest.
I can hardly think of anything more ironic and dismal than surviving a plane crash and then getting run over by an emergency vehicle.
The Grim Reaper said, “Not so fast, buddy.”
The stuff I have in my carry-on IS life-or-death. That’s why it’s in my carry on. And yes, it’s coming with me.
Heh, couple of posts above remind me of a small statured old guy I used to know describing someone. ‘Big man, about my size’, he said, hooking his thumbs in the straps of his coveralls and rocking up on his toes.
Oh god. Do I have to lay it out? If each of those 60 people took .25 seconds, that adds up to 15 seconds. See how that works?
The point here is that nobody should be grabbing anything that isn’t in their hand, or would impair their ability to exit the aircraft immediately. Stopping for even a fraction of a second to grab something that isn’t another person, endangers everybody behind you. No shock you guys are more worried about having to cancel your credit cards than the people behind you.
So yeah… I’m the crazy one. Keep smoking that crack guys.
Math is hard for leftists…heh If 60 people simultaneously took .25 seconds, that would be a total of .25 seconds. There’s no reason to expect they would take turns of .25 seconds to gather their belongings.
Well, some of them would be leftists, maybe they would…
Admitting that you’re crazy is the first step, John.
If you’re talking about me, I’ll admit to the old part, getting there, at least. All of the rest of it is true and I still bear the scars of some of it. Not that I have to defend myself to you.
John comes across as a naive young man who is still living life according to the “manual”, never having faced anything more dangerous than a sniffle. John, pray that you and your family never have to face anything more serious than that sniffle. All of the info in the guidebooks can go sideways real quick in real life.