Airplane evacuation safety concerns resurface after American Airlines incident
- Passengers evacuating a burning American Airlines plane in Denver carried luggage, raising safety concerns.
- Rep. Steve Cohen expressed concerns about evacuation safety and urged the FAA to conduct more realistic tests.
- Experts emphasize the importance of leaving belongings behind during an evacuation.
When an American Airlines flight was evacuated on the runway in Denver in July, video showed many of the passengers going down the slides with their carry-on luggage in tow.
That's a big no-no from safety experts, and it sparked the latest round of concerns from lawmakers and others that airplane evacuations just can't happen as safely as they should.
In a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration a few days after the American Airlines incident, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he's concerned that airlines are no longer configured with evacuation safety in mind.
Cohen sponsored legislation that was passed as part of the 2024 FAA reauthorization, which requires the agency to conduct new evacuation testing to ensure modern aircraft can be evacuated in 90 seconds or less. The agency previously conducted evacuation testing in 2019, but many experts and lawmakers, including Cohen, said the design of those tests was flawed.
“The urgency of these concerns was made evident by the recent emergency evacuation of American Airlines Flight 3023 at Denver International Airport, reportedly triggered by a landing gear fire. Video footage shows smoke pouring from the aircraft as passengers – some with carry-on bags, others carrying children – rushed down emergency slides." Cohen's letter said, adding that the evacuation appeared to have taken as long as 15 minutes.
“Congress did not write the EVAC Act into law to produce symbolic improvements. We did so to ensure that every passenger, regardless of age, size, ability or language. can evacuate safely and efficiently in an emergency.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., sent a similar letter to the FAA on Tuesday.
"These incidents once again raise serious questions about FAA’s 90 second evacuation standard 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)," her letter said.
While it's unclear whether the FAA will conduct new, more rigorous, evacuation testing, experts said there are some things passengers can do to ensure they get off the plane as quickly and safely as possible in an emergency.
The most important thing is to leave everything behind.
“During an evacuation, seconds matter. The time you take to grab something from in front of you or from the overhead compartment, it’s wasting time, and that time could result in a fatality,” Anthony Brickhouse, director of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Forensic Lab, previously told Paste BN. “It creates clutter, and it could damage the slide, which can make it inoperable … The most important thing is to get yourself out of that aircraft as quickly as possible.”
Other helpful actions include paying attention to the safety briefing on every flight, identifying your nearest exist, knowing your escape route and leaving your shoes on for takeoff and landing. Those phases of flight are when issues most often occur, so it's a good idea to be ready to move if you have to.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for Paste BN. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.