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Baggage-Toting Fliers Remain a Risk to Emergency Evacuations

Many passengers jump down slides carrying suitcases, laptop computers and other valuables.

Passengers walk away from the Boeing 777 that crashed Saturday at San Francisco International Airport. Flight attendants are trained to make passengers drop bags before they jump onto evacuation slides. ENLARGE

Jumping down a steep evacuation slide from a burning airplane with people all around panicking isn't easy, and you need your arms and hands to help. Yet time after time, passengers evacuate toting suitcases, laptop computers and other valuables they apparently can't leave behind.

Images from the crash landing of Asiana Airlines 020560 1.01 % Flight 214 in San Francisco showed some dazed passengers fleeing the Boeing BA 0.47 % 777 wreckage with carry-on bags and iPads. One even had two boxes of duty-free alcohol. Some ran in shoes with heels—another bad idea when survival is at stake.

"You have 90 seconds or less to evacuate. If people are worried about their luggage instead of the people behind them, it's a problem,'' said Leslie Mayo, communications coordinator for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and a veteran American Airlines flight attendant.

Flight attendants are trained to bark commands that get dazed and panicky passengers moving. At American, attendants train to yell "Open seat belts! Leave everything! Come this way!"

There are multiple reasons to leave belongings behind. Grabbing bags out of overhead bins or from under seats can clog aisles and slow an evacuation. Jumping down a slide designed for rapid movement is jarring and often people clutching bags lose them. Items go flying into other evacuees, flight attendants say. And then there is the need for your arms and hands when you get to the bottom to brace against impact with the ground.

"You go down that slide faster than a ride at Six Flags,'' said Sara Nelson, international vice president at the Association of Flight Attendants.

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Flight attendants are trained to make passengers drop bags at the door before they jump onto slides. But that means doorways get cluttered, potentially slowing evacuation. In a recent evacuation with a possible onboard fire at a U.S. airline, attendants took bags from exiting passengers and stacked them in a galley like cordwood, said Ms. Nelson, a United Airlines flight attendant.

Pointed heels on shoes can puncture inflated rubber slides, creating severe problems for people still on board. Some airlines train attendants to yell "shoes off." But many have given that up, concluding there is more benefit in passengers having shoes on and little threat to slides from the few in big heels, said AFA's Ms. Nelson.

Safety experts say that because cabins are filled with panic and chaos, people should practice simple evacuation steps on every flight so they can be ready. Reacting a half-second quicker could be a matter of life or death.

Unbuckling a seat belt, for example, isn't always intuitive in an emergency since automobile seat belts, more commonly used, have a push-button release and airplane seat belts have a latch to lift up. (That is why flight attendants are required to demonstrate the seemingly simple task of seat-belt use on planes.) A 2008 study by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority found that 6% of passengers involved in 238 accidents world-wide got delayed in evacuation by seat-belt struggles.

On the US Airways Hudson River landing in 2009, only 10 of 150 passengers grabbed a life jacket before evacuating, and only about half took a seat cushion for flotation, according to the National Transportation Safety Board's report. All survived.

Emergency-evacuation training courses teach travelers to stay low when there is smoke and crawl if necessary. Counting the rows to the nearest exit before takeoff can be important so you know which way to go and how far it is. Instructors at a British Airways evacuation course tell fliers that people who think about what to do in a crisis are the ones who get out first.

Write to Scott McCartney at

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