After a string of headline-grabbing plane evacuations over the past few months—from flights in Denver in March and July and from a jet in Orlando in April—the FAA is telling airlines it's time to rethink how they get passengers off planes in a crisis. The agency, citing recent incidents where travelers had carry-on luggage in hand as they exited during an emergency evacuation, has issued a fresh directive: Make it unmistakably clear that carry-on bags stay behind during emergencies.
The FAA says these decisions to grab bags slowed everyone down and amped up the danger. Now, NBC News reports the agency wants airlines to sharpen announcements, passenger instructions, and crew training so the message lands: In an emergency, personal belongings are a hard no. AV Web notes that the FAA's directive follows an August request from Sen. Tammy Duckworth for data on evacuation safety.
In a press release, she referenced the aforementioned incidents, noting footage from the July evacuation in Denver "showed passengers deplaning with their carry-on luggage, with one passenger reporting the process took 10 to 15 minutes." In her view, that raises "serious questions" about the FAA's current standards, which call for everyone to be off the plane in 90 seconds, "as well as FAA's assumptions about how evacuations occur in real world conditions (such as the assumption every passenger will comply with instructions to deplane without carry-on bags)."
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