American Airlines flight 4837 from Indianapolis to Chicago rejected takeoff on Saturday morning when smoke was reported in the cabin. The Republic Airways Embraer ERJ175 was accelerating on runway 5L at the time.
Some of the 67 passengers on board were “crying and kind of screaming and you could see people praying,” according to one man on the flight, after they “started seeing smoke coming from the cabin door and smelled something burning.”
Here’s video from the tarmac:
According to Republic “All customers and crew members were safely evacuated.” And the carrier started “working with our partner to get customers to their destination as quickly as possible.”
Passengers were placed on a replacement Embraer ERJ-175 and arrived a little over two hours late, which is impressive under the circumstances.
After about a day on the ground the airline tried to use the aircraft again for another flight – but the aircraft again needed to return to the gate.
They couldn’t have been too worried. Looks like many of them actually slowed down the evacuation by taking their carryon luggage out of the overhead. How stupid.
« .. the crew rejected takeoff at low speed (about 35 knots over ground « .
So hardly hurtling down the runway then
It is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING that people have carry-on luggage with them after evacuating an aircraft like this.
Sure, it turned out not to be a major issue but they do not know that in the moment. They completely put others’ lives in potential danger for their worthless crap. Why do we see this each time there is an incident like this?
What is the tail number of the crew rejected smoking aircraft used for American Airlines flight 4837?
Shrieking and howling like wild animals..Sounds about right for naptown chicago
The plane must’ve been loaded with a full coach cabin.
Psychologists have established that stupid people:
(a) are unaware they’re stupid;
(b) falsely think others are stupid.
@Skooby and @FunTraveler, above, are textbook cases.
We all know in an emergency to leave all items behind making egress the top priority. However, there’s quite a difference between knowing it and living it. The vast majority of passengers don’t have (and FAA does not require) air passengers to have been trained in evacuation. As such, in the heat of the moment innocent lapses in judgment — due to a cognitive shutdown of deliberate conscious judgment, not at all borne of selfishness or malintent — manifest as passengers evacuating with their luggage. You take your stuff with you when you leave–that’s been habituated. There’s an extra cognitive load, for which humans cannot expend in a stressful emergency situation, unless they’ve been trained, which, to reiterate, is not an FAA requirement to be an air passenger. Perhaps it should be? Reasonable debate can follow from that. What is not reasonable is to call a passenger stupid for not thinking clearly during a fraught and challenging moment they have likely never experienced and will never again experience.
Gary Leff often states on this blog that “TSA has never caught a terrorist.”
Let me add that carry-on luggage has never prevented anyone from actually evacuating during an evacuation. Not a single injury or loss of life can be traced back to someone carrying luggage when they shouldn’t have been.
@Skooby and @FunTraveler, please understand that you’re the stupid ones, moreover you’re low EQ, as the passengers involved on this Regional Jet deserve your sympathy, not your criticism.
@Yin Yang — well said!
Sorry @Yin Jing. My apologies
@Yin Yang you may want to google Aeroflot Flight 1492. There’s are expect opinions that say that folks retrieving their carry on luggage certainly didn’t help to save those who burned to death.
Yin Jing is correct. The relevant quote is “‘Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training.” Most passengers have never practiced an evacuation, but all have “practiced” getting off an airplane, and that is where the muscle memory has been built. In an emergency, people will regress to the behavior to which they have been physically habituated. 99% of the people who come into these comments sections and cast aspersions at people leaving with hand luggage during emergencies would do the same themselves. This is not ideal, and the Aeroflot example, etc. are very relevant, but from a psychology perspective, it is the fact of the matter.
Nothing to fear at all as American Airlines is Number ONE. No airline comes even close.
Full Disclosure: I am a CK and my wife is also a CK.
I don’t have a problem with taking carryons that passengers keep on them or under the seat, but reaching up and pulling down stuff from the overhead bins will never be conducive to a safe efficient emergency exit operation.
Being in the airline business and as a pilot instructor, I always note the clothes that I wear versus what others wear aboard the aircraft. I then realize that I’m gonna have to drag that person dressed in pajamas and flip flops off of the aircraft OR watch them burn to death because they don’t THINK. I agree with Jing about “stupid”. Ignorance can be fixed, stupid can’t. People are STUPID to think they can survive a major incident wearing shorts or pajamas and flip flops! Even when I have a leisure trip, I dress in long cotton pants, closed toe shoes and a cotton shirt. Yeah, I wear short sleeves but all one has to do is take one trip down the emergency slide (required training for flight attendants and pilots) and it’s easy to see why my dress code is safer…just in case. If one remembers the Asiana 777 crash in SFO, the passengers were gathering their belongings before they went down the slides. IDIOTS! Get the **** off of the jet first! The suitcase is later.
In this case, I don’t see people actually evacuating with their carry on luggage. How do we know that it wasn’t later retrieved for them after everyone was off and the ’emergency’ stabilized? Maybe I missed something. I do 100% agree .. get off the plane .. the carry ons and personal items can be replaced – you are costing time and possibly lives in an emergency by thinking of nothing but yourself and your bag full of dirty clothes. Pay attention to the crew.
No need to get nasty, gee 🙁
I’m hoping to be a hero if needed. I wear all natural fibers. I keep my shoes on & tied on takeoff and landing, I keep my important documents and electronics (iPhone but not iPad) on my person – cargo shorts always in style ;-). And now probably my thyroid Rx on my person.
Be prepared
Be compassionate
The airlines need to start cracking down on people retrieving their carry-ons during evacuations…
In my opinion, any passenger that does this should be banned from future travel with the airline.
Perhaps something like this could be mentioned in the pre-flight safety announcements?
“In the unlikely event of an evacuation, you must leave any carry-ons behind. Failure to follow these or other safety instructions may result in injury or loss of travel privileges on any [Airline_Name] flight.”