Since starting this job, I’ve taken an interest in learning about aviation incidents over the years, and as such I was reading about Emirates flight EK521 which crash landed in Dubai in 2016, necessitating an emergency evacuation.

In footage of the evacuation you can clearly hear the flight attendants repeating “Leave all baggage. Jump and slide!” but passengers seem more concerned with rooting around in the overhead lockers than getting out of the plane quickly. In the following investigation, it was noted that it was ‘miraculous’ that all passengers were evacuated safely as, shortly after the final passenger disembarked, the fuel tanks ruptured and the hull was engulfed in a fireball.

There is, of course, nothing miraculous about cabin emergency procedures which had been drilled in to the well-trained Emirates cabin crew, but the entitled attitude of some passengers in this instance says to me that they regarded the flight attendants as servants, and not there for passenger safety.

While i was musing about this, another incident occurred. An American Airlines flight was forced to evacuate prior to departure as smoke (found to be from a passengers laptop) appeared in the cabin. Again, passengers were reported to be seen getting their bags from the lockers, despite instructions not to. Even more worryingly, one person took it upon himself to open a door and deploy and emergency slide that the crew had clearly told him not to use.

I have no answers about what can or should be done about passengers that behave like this. All i would say is that it is about time that airlines changed their marketing and start presenting flight attendants as professionals who should be listened to, rather than as meek and demure trolley pushers.