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Comment by speg | Hacker News Reader

Why did they collect your shoes?

Back in the day they had everyone remove their shoes if they thought the inflatable slides would be used... This article says it is so a heel wouldn't pop the slide or injure someone below them on the way down.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/14/us/shoe-policy-may-change...

So 90% of people not wearing heels have to run over burning tarmac with no footwear?

It’s not only heels that can chase a puncture and it’s still better than the flight crew having to inspect each shoe individually.

You can't run in heels. And we crossed only a short bit of tarmac before being assembled on a big patch of grass.

I think you're better off running in bare feet than damaging the slide or spearing the person ahead of you. That ramp is STEEP (apparently broken ankles are common).

Sidenote, it's something addressed in close protection training. If the principal is a woman and she's wearing heels, good teams will have some kind of thin flat shoe nearby for her.

That is part of the reasoning behind changing the procedure. I think it mentions it in the article.

Yeah, I guess the guys who have planned exactly for this, spent years looking at it, and created one of the safest industries in the world did not think of that?

Apparently not, as they changed the rules to make you only remove high heel shoes.

Airlines are safe because they keep learning from mistakes and updating regulations with new evidence.

A little more detail on current policy:

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/31920/in-what-c...

They can damage the escape slides.

It also just makes sliding easier.

Sounds like a design problem. A covering of woven UHMW HDPE would make the slides more puncture and slash resistant, and could take the "collect passenger shoes" item off the emergency checklist.

But that would also make the slides more expensive, so it really all depends on what the airline thinks a dead passenger is worth.

Edit: The structural integrity of the slide is provided by pneumatic pressure on a rubber-like material (neoprene?). The thickness of that material could be reduced somewhat if HDPE fibers were added. You're not trying to make the things bulletproof, just shoe-resistant. The end result would be a lighter slide, but it would be an order of magnitude more expensive.

The probability of the slide being used is low. I expect the slight inconvenience of passengers removing their shoes during an emergency doesn't justify the extra weight on the slide.

If there's something sharp on the shoe it can pop the emergency slide

So you can go through the metal detectors. ;-)

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