An emergency evacuation of a United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner at Los Angeles International Airport once again highlighted both the effectiveness of modern aircraft evacuation procedures…and one of the most persistent safety problems in commercial aviation.
United Airlines 787-9 Evacuated At LAX After Engine Issue. Should Passengers Be Punished For Taking Carry-On Bags Down Slides?
A United Airlines Boeing 787-9 was evacuated at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) after an apparent engine fire shortly after departure forced an immediate U-turn to LAX.
The aircraft, operating United flight 2127 from Los Angeles to Newark, experienced an engine issue shortly after takeoff and declared an emergency, returning to LAX after reaching just 18,000 feet. Airport fire crews quickly responded and the aircraft came to a stop on the taxiway. Although it appeared the aircraft would disembark via air stairs, crew initiated an emergency evacuation, deploying slides from three emergency exit doors on the starboard side of the plane.
Here’s video from outside the aircraft and inside the aircraft during evacuation:
Passengers exited the aircraft via emergency slides, with video from the scene showing the evacuation proceeding rapidly and in an orderly fashion. Reports indicate that the aircraft was evacuated in well under the 90-second certification standard required for commercial airliners.
Fortunately, there were no serious injuries reported.
Modern widebody aircraft like the Boeing 787 are specifically designed to allow a full evacuation within 90 seconds using only half of the available exits. In this case, the crew’s quick response ensured everyone was able to get off safely.
But as videos of the evacuation began circulating online, another issue quickly became apparent.
Passengers Again Took Carry-On Bags During The Evacuation
Several passengers were seen exiting the aircraft with carry-on bags in hand while sliding down the emergency chutes.
This has become an increasingly common problem in aircraft evacuations. Despite repeated safety briefings and explicit instructions from flight attendants to leave all belongings behind, some passengers still choose to retrieve luggage from overhead bins before exiting the aircraft.
The danger is obvious.
Opening overhead bins slows down the evacuation process and can create bottlenecks in the aisle. Even worse, hard luggage can damage evacuation slides, potentially rendering them unusable and trapping passengers behind.
Aviation regulators and airlines have warned about this behavior for years, yet it continues to happen in evacuation after evacuation.
What Can Actually Be Done About It?
There are several theoretical solutions to the carry-on problem, though none are perfect…or even great.
One idea occasionally raised is criminal penalties for passengers who retrieve luggage during an evacuation. In theory, this could serve as a deterrent. In practice, enforcement would be difficult and controversial, especially if passengers claim they did not hear or understand instructions.
Another concept is technological: automatically locking overhead bins when the evacuation command is triggered. While appealing on paper, this could introduce new complications if bins malfunction or if passengers stop to try to “break open” the overhead lockers.
The uncomfortable reality may be that some passengers will simply ignore instructions.
Human behavior during emergencies is unpredictable. People instinctively reach for personal belongings. My colleague David Feldman suggests airlines and regulators may need to factor this behavior into evacuation planning rather than assuming perfect compliance.
Feldman later added, “[W]e can’t just have wishful thinking. Modeling and standards should be revisited to take into account that some folks will continue acting the same. That may mean changes to LOPA standards.”
Is his pragmatism valid? Must we accept that there will be uncouth, selfish people who will act like this?
Maybe. And maybe I would act the same way under pressure…we often don’t know until we are tested. I’ll stop far short of confidently boasting that I would be better, even though I certainly hope I would be.
But somehow the Japanese, for example, are able to evacuate a plane without taking their carry-on items with them. The problem is more cultural than human nature. And I strongly doubt that regulators would require airlines to remove seats onboard simply because some passengers refuse to follow crewmember instructions.
It’s worth nothing that the evacuation was completed here in well under the required clearing timing despite the fact that many took their bags with them. Real-world evacuations rarely look like certification tests, but the system worked here…even though there were selfish passengers onboard.
Is that enough to acknowledge the system worked despite human weakness, or must we seriously return to this issue and search for a more viable solution?
CONCLUSION
The successful evacuation of the United Airlines 787-9 at LAX demonstrates just how well modern aircraft evacuation procedures can work when crews respond quickly and passengers move toward the exits.
But the persistent issue of passengers retrieving carry-on luggage remains a troubling safety problem.
Whether the solution lies in stronger enforcement, better passenger education, technological fixes, or simply acknowledging the realities of human behavior, the aviation industry must confront this issue more directly, as the next evacuation may not be as forgiving…
Because people dont trust that they’ll get their stuff back in a timely manner. Sure, you can be a Boy Scout and leave all your stuff but if you get another flight later that day, you’ll be taking that flight without any of your stuff. It could be hours or even days until you can get your property back and resume your onward travel. The people that took their stuff will board their new flights and be on their way.
You’re not supposed to be worried about getting your stuff back during a life and death emergency. You’re supposed to worry about not getting killed or getting someone else killed. That’s what normal, sane people do. No amount of excuses can justify the inexcusable.
Exactly Michael. I’m all in favor of fines and even banning customers from future flights. I’d easily argue this is far more dangerous to other passengers than a drunk on a plane.
Anything that slows down exiting potentially risks others lives, no two ways about it.
Agreed, Michael; and if I’m evacuated off an aircraft you’d better believe that I won’t be flying AMYWHERE for the rest of the day, hand-luggage or not.
Does that airplane look on fire to you?
@CHRIS, I don’t understand your point. The pilots declared an emergency and called for an evacuation. What does it matter if you see fire or not? Captain has the final say, and they have the information needed to make that determination. Passengers do not. Stop making excuses for inexcusable behavior.
I bet the pilot didn’t leave his bag with flight records and personal items
So yet again, we are proposing dumbing down everyone else to accommodate the dumb/selfish passengers? Start meetings late to accommodate late arrivals, or better yet, tell everyone the meeting starts earlier, and make those showing up on time waste 15 min to accommodate those who will inevitable show up late. Lower the passing grades. Trophies for everyone. Now it’s factor in a longer evacuation time? Sorry, no. Your inability to follow instructions or not caring about them does not take precedent over everyone’s safety. This expressly falls under disobeying crew instructions. If they can kick you off a flight when a FA goes on a power trip because you “disobeyed them”, the airline can very easily ban passengers from future flights for something more egregious like this. So can the FAA. No need for criminal penalties. Just ban them and let them deal with getting to Dallas on Greyhound. It can be done. It’s just bad for business. So let’s stop pretending airlines “care about your safety”. If they did, they’d walk the walk and this would have been solved already.
Agree.
There needs to be an automatic, un-appealable lifetime ban on all airlines that serve any US airport, period, no exceptions. Even then, plenty of entitled morons would still do it. So in addiction to the lifetime ban, impose a one-million-dollar fine AND a 10-year prison sentence for anyone who does this.
Still, some folks would still do it. Fine – getting those people out of society and into a prison would benefit us all.
Glad everyone was mostly alright. While we’re welcome to play blame-games and clutch pearls, you never know how it’ll go when it’s your time. So, if you can, and you don’t hold anyone else up, why not still bring your wallets, purses, pets, and children. Let everything else burn.
I carry a small personal item (a one day survival kit) that’s stored underneath the seat in front of me. That is what I am prepared to take with me in an evacuation. My carry-on will stay in the overhead bin.
Which you’re not supposed to take. Anything that doesn’t fit in your pockets stays. Keys, wallet, phone, keep them in your pocket and that’s it. It’s why they have a rule, and the rule and instructions say leave ALL belongings behind. Why? Because people are stupid and they start playing these mental gymnastics in their mind. “It’s only a laptop”. “I worked on a presentation all flight long”. “It’s a small purse”. “It only takes me 2 seconds to retrieve a small shit sandwich”. IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER. 2 seconds per passenger adds up an additional 5 minutes for the last person to exit. In an emergency every second matters. Nobody cares what you need to take off the plane. I guarantee you whatever it is, you can find it within a 2 mile radius and have it reimbursed by the airline. You cannot be trusted to make that judgment call, because most people are stupid. So the call has already been made for you, and it’s “everything stays behind”.
This problem is because of moral decay. People are afraid their stuff will be stolen or the airline will either refuse compensation or give not enough to replace carry on luggage. In Japan, theft is much lower as is murder.
Solution is for automatic payments of $10,000 if you go down the slide without any luggage. That would be paid for by a 10 cent fee on tickets. Isn’t the chance of evacuation about once in every 1 million flights or less? United has about 30,000 flights a week or 1.5M flights a year.
$10,000 sounds pretty good to me. Please, by all means, take/burn my bag. *jumps* ‘weee!’
I think it should be a huge fine if you are caught with luggage during an evacuation. The safety announcement should reinforce that. It’s on you if you didn’t pay attention to the briefing. When a Sukhoi S-100 burned on the runway in Moscow a few years ago, people died because the evacuation was slow due to pax taking their carryon. Some of the surviving pax were criminally charged for taking their carryon and slowing down things. I am shocked that people would think it is okay to go down a slide with a hard sided carryon! Seriously, the sh*t just hit the fan and you need your bag? Sad that people are so selfish.
rebooking after an evacution should not be allowed until the airline has completed baggage retrieval. remove the incentive to evacuate with bags.
So get stuck for hours or even days because the airline can’t maintain their aircraft and prevent evacuations?
When you have an NTSB investigation the first priority isn’t retrieving bags from the plane. This isn’t practical.
You can’t be serious suggesting pax leave their Jane Birkin’s and Wingham’s on board.
I cannot believe that people took their roller bags down the chutes!! They need to be fined or banned from the next 48 hours of flights!! Selfish
Evacuation standards don’t allow for having emotional support animals onboard. I doubt their owners would ever consider leaving them behind or consider the risk to others lives as they struggle to get the animal down the ailse and onto the slide.
Fine them.
Flight attendants should have a gun and shoot anyone with a carry on during evacuation, then dump their bodies on the slide and let them tumble down, One incident like this will set a precedent.
It seems that in situations like this, people don’t even realize how quickly a jetliner with a full fuel tank can burst into flames…
Life should come first!
If you can’t follow a safety instruction in a life-or-death emergency, you shouldn’t be allowed to fly with the airline again, ever. Where is United’s Passenger Incident Review Committee?
PS: I just wonder how the folks in that Boeing office building were reacting to the situation unfolding just outside. Does that building house executive offices?
Undoubtedly, this latest incident has reignited concerns about the reliability of Boeing engines…
Throw carry-ons in a mini bonfire at the bottom of the slide. Fire and rescue are already there for safety.
Flight attendants, co-pilot and then the captain will be the last to leave an evacuated aircraft. Selfish people causing a delay don’t care about the lives of the ones in control of the aircraft. I will climb over seats to evacuate while people are pulling bags from the overhead.
I particularly like the guy with the overstuffed backpack, a large rollerboard and his coat, walking like he was already on a jet bridge. It was also evident that people were colliding/ crashing into each other at the bottom of the slide. One women plowed into was elderly. Selfish morons, selfish clowns that couldn’t care any less if someone else gets hurt or killed. As well, they are the ones that will feign injury or emotional damage for the rest of their lives and make sure they get the lion’s share of a lawsuit.