By now, you probably have heard of Emirates Flight 521, which made an emergency landing at Dubai International Airport a few days ago. It was traveling from Trivandrum International Airport in Thiruvananthapuram, India to Dubai when it appeared to catch on fire as it landed. Miraculously, all 282 passengers and 18 crew members were able to successfully evacuate the aircraft with no fatalities, though one firefighter did die fighting the fire.
Video from INSIDE the evacuating aircraft
Over on the Points With a Crew Slack channel, user @tomasdev posted a link to this Youtube video, which appears to have been taken by one of the evacuating passengers from flight EK521.
Much of the in-plane chatter is in Arabic, which I do not understand, though you can hear at some point a voice (probably a flight attendant) telling people to “jump – leave your bags”. The entire video you can see people stopping to open up the overhead bins to take luggage with them. While I can understand your attachment to “stuff”, especially in a high-stress situation where you might not be thinking clearly, I hope you can understand that this endangers not only you and your family, but EVERYONE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE PLANE!!
Should you take your bags in an emergency?
This is actually something that I’ve wondered about before – whether you should take your bags in case of an aircraft evacuation. Originally, I was under the impression that taking a small bag at your feet would not be a big deal
(SEE ALSO: Sorry, I’m TAKING my bag in an airplane emergency)
But then, in what is sure to be a first in the HISTORY of the Internet, I was convinced to change my mind by the random comments of complete strangers on the Internet
(SEE ALSO: REVISITED: I’m taking my bags in an airplane evacuation)
There are a variety of reasons not to take your bag. Besides slowing things down for every other passenger behind you, there’s the idea that heavy roller-bags are a definite risk to yourself and other passengers as you are evacuating down the inflatable slide.
I should point out, in my defense, that even when I thought I was apt to take my bag, I was just talking about my laptop bag at my feet as I went – I never felt it was right to stop to open up the overhead bins to get your luggage.
I hope that if you’re of the mindset to take your bag in an airplane evacuation that this video changes your mind. Thankfully, it didn’t cost anyone their life in this case, but it very easily could have.
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Dan,
Most of the video is NOT in Arabic, most of the passengers are speaking in Malayalam, the native language of Kerala state where the flight originated. A few words of crew announcements in Arabic, yes.
And then the two great crew members, the first a male yelling (as he should have been) “Leave everything, leave the bags!” and then the female crew member at the slide yelling “Jump, jump, jump! Leave your bags behind, jump and slide, jump and slide!”
Great work by the cabin crew, unfortunate but typical passenger reactions as seen in many prior situations like the BA incident in Vegas, hope it wasn’t pilot error or passenger selfishness that got that firefighter killed.
Thanks – I didn’t pay too much attention to the language (other than noting that I couldn’t understand it). What you said makes sense as I believe I did read that most of the passengers were Indian.
Assuming that most passengers were Malayalam speakers, why were evacuation instructions being delivered in English (by Arabic speakers)?
I obviously can’t speak for sure why not, but my guess would be because English is the official language of aviation (I think?)
Without doubt I would be shoving people toward the door , screaming at them and probably bashing some of them too . In a plane fire you die from toxic smoke in two or three minutes . I would probably get over excited .
Thank you for sharing such an informative article which focuses on what to do in an emergency. Here the example of the EMIRATES FLIGHT 521 is shown which made an emergency landing in Dubai and a video which shows the chaos among people during the evacuation. It is highly necessary to know the steps to follow in such emergency.