When next you fly, assess your cabin baggage. Not to see if it will conform with the airlines’ ever-more complex range of rules on weight and dimensions, but to estimate the value of its contents. I speculate it will contain what you need for the flight itself – laptop or tablet, reports to read, perhaps some better-than-airport-quality snacks – plus what you really don’t want to lose: mobile phone, camera, washbag...
Next, predict how you would feel if it was snatched from you – as, regrettably, happens frequently, particularly at transport hubs where travellers are distracted and disorientated. I would be upset and angry, but reassured that these days pretty much everything is replaceable. Even the, err, priceless contents of my laptop are duplicated (or at least they will be as soon as I get home and remember to back up).
As you will probably have guessed, I mention this because, for the second time in less than a year, a Boeing 777 has been in flames on a runway – and some passengers retrieved their cabin baggage before escaping the burning plane.
Like you, I am keen to know what went wrong aboard Emirates flight EK521 for it to crash-land at Dubai. All 300 passengers and crew got out alive, though tragically a firefighter died when the blaze took hold.
Some of the images on social media were chillingly similar to British Airways flight 2276, whose left-hand engine burst into flames during the take-off run at Las Vegas. The 170 people on the Gatwick-bound jet also got out alive, and the plane is now back in active service. But when every second counts, as it does in an emergency, the sight of passengers wheeling their cabin baggage away from the stricken aircraft is shocking.
Laurie Price, the leading aviation strategist, was also appalled. “‘Leave hand baggage behind’ means just that,” he told me in an email, shortly after the pictures emerged.
09/08/16 Simon Calder/Independent
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Next, predict how you would feel if it was snatched from you – as, regrettably, happens frequently, particularly at transport hubs where travellers are distracted and disorientated. I would be upset and angry, but reassured that these days pretty much everything is replaceable. Even the, err, priceless contents of my laptop are duplicated (or at least they will be as soon as I get home and remember to back up).
As you will probably have guessed, I mention this because, for the second time in less than a year, a Boeing 777 has been in flames on a runway – and some passengers retrieved their cabin baggage before escaping the burning plane.
Like you, I am keen to know what went wrong aboard Emirates flight EK521 for it to crash-land at Dubai. All 300 passengers and crew got out alive, though tragically a firefighter died when the blaze took hold.
Some of the images on social media were chillingly similar to British Airways flight 2276, whose left-hand engine burst into flames during the take-off run at Las Vegas. The 170 people on the Gatwick-bound jet also got out alive, and the plane is now back in active service. But when every second counts, as it does in an emergency, the sight of passengers wheeling their cabin baggage away from the stricken aircraft is shocking.
Laurie Price, the leading aviation strategist, was also appalled. “‘Leave hand baggage behind’ means just that,” he told me in an email, shortly after the pictures emerged.
09/08/16 Simon Calder/Independent
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