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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

I am inclined to think that this exact same scenario featuring a plane full of not Japanese, but, say, Dutch, English, or Americans, would not have resulted in a full evacuation in 18 minutes; possibly with casualties. Obeying commands as a group in a high-pressure situation? That takes a lifetime of living in a culture where this is normal. A group of military passengers (any nationality) would probably have worked just as well.

(Not to say that Japanese culture is better, just that it happens to be very beneficial in this scenario.)

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Maybe this is a good time for me to vent about exit row seating? I was recently on a holiday flight where an older couple walked very delicately up to the gate. When prompted, "are you able and willing to assist in the event of an emergency?" the lady immediately said "oh no, we can't..." and the guy says "well, there won't be an emergency, right?" To her credit, the crew member checking us in very sternly told him that his attitude was completely unacceptable and that their seats would be moved.

But it made me think: realistically, the only people sitting in exit rows should be reasonably fit 18-45 year olds in most cases (and I'd prefer men). Yet it's usually whoever has the most money/points/status to get the extra leg room.

/end rant

s/18-45 year olds//

s/(and I'd prefer men)//

Otherwise I agree. I have no problem with Stallone or Schwarzenegger in the exit rows. But realistically, they fly private jets or in first class.

Edit: Ageism and sexism are good, anti-ageism and feminism are bad! That effective accelerationist mindset has no room for the womenfolk or the senile!

> fit 18-45 year olds in most cases

Anecdotally, I believe many airlines do this - it's happened to me a few times during check in where they've asked if I'd be OK with the emergency seat.

Is this US or EU or somewhere else? I have some experience in Europe.

I (male early thirties then) once was sat in an exit row (replaced with some other passenger) when flying EasyJet. As I understood then only because I seemed to be more fit to sit there.

Once travelling with Ryanair stewardess exclaimed that "oh no you will be sitting with a baby in an exit row". We said "no no we are sitting the row behind". She said "thanks god I thought I will need to rearrange passengers". Of course a baby in an exit row MUST be a big no no anywhere.

So I have a feeling that it is being looked quite seriously.

What, specifically, do you think requires a strong man in this case?

Airplane overwing exit doors come in two types. The ones that you fully detach and throw out, which weigh less than the average passenger's suitcase [1]. The larger and heavier ones are spring-assisted so you can literally open them with one hand while seated [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/RCFzEg-t_Bk?si=xACVKqIvakrrJnaT at 0:25

[2] https://youtu.be/ZW4xaHN1otE?si=rr0kHUzrRSXJY3Pr at 0:20

On the last plane I was, the door was 17kg and instructions said to pick it up, turn sideways, then throw away. I prefer strong men to do it when my life depends on it.

I googled if it was possible. It harder mid flight, but take offs or landing its much easier. I would rather we accept the fact this risk exists and take the necessary precaution of putting someone at the door that can more handle the situation than pretend it doesn't exist.

To me it seems the biggest dangers about exit doors are not accidents. But someone who snaps and wants to open the exit door during take off/landing where the outside air pressure is low enough to more easily open the door. In this kind of situation a strong man doesn't hurt.

unless the strong man is the one that wants to open the door.

i think i've heard of someone trying to open a door mid flight once though, so unless i'm poorly informed, let's not give the TSA ideas around mental health screenings before flights.

You mean when the inside air pressure is low enough. Aircraft doors fit like a plug, held in by air pressure in the cabin. If you look when they are opened they all move inward first. This is why they can't be opened mid-flight.

At the point where they can be opened, the pressure differential is going to be so low that nothing bad is going to happen, other than maybe someone's bag in the exit row being blown out by the wind. Plus everyone should be strapped in at that point.

This happened just last year IIRC in Korea. Nothing was in serious danger (except maybe some travel schedules). A comment already described the mechanism and why that’s not really a thing to worry about.

Aeroflot Flight 1492 is a perfect example of this. Passengers were actively working to get carry-on bags down the emergency slide as 41 people were burning to death in the back of the plane.

Russians are the very extreme example — we're much more individualistic and self-centered than Dutch, English, or Americans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_1492

https://www.flightglobal.com/analysis/analysis-superjet-fire...

Made for interesting reading. I think that it's possible that one more life could have been saved without those carry-on bags. That's a responsibility the passangers and crew both share.

The Russians seem to have an unusual attitude to human life, currently illustrated by the tens of thousands being killed in Ukraine for no particularly good reason. The reaction seems to be

>Putin urges Russian women to have ‘eight or more’ children... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-put...

rather than avoiding it all by going home and having a cup of tea or some such.

These must be two extremes of cultures. Russian and Japanese must be the very opposites in almost every way.

Counterexample https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549?wprov=s...

Edit: interestingly, the evacuation took about the same time in total, but in a river, not on land.

Arguably looking out the window and realizing they were in the Hudson River might have lead them to realize they weren't going to be swimming with their wheelie.

The U.S. is a very punitive society and I think if you were to find yourself in the tarmac after an evacuation holding onto your carry on, you’d at minimum be getting a large fine for disobeying a flight attendant and possibly more. Not being in the Hudson isn’t going to change the fact that you are ending up in the middle of nowhere once you are off the plane.

There have been many instances of people deplaning from an engine-on-fire plane in US, with luggage. Spirit, Southwest, and some Caribbean airlines in recent 2-3 years at the very least.

In such situations, people won’t think about that.

What I’ve read, the reason people taking their carry-on at least partly is because, when having to get out of a plane in a stressful situation, they won’t think “what shall I do now.”, but just activate their “deboard plane” program, and that involves getting their bags before getting out of the plane.

Then, the planes should be fitted with pilot-commanded overhead baggage locks.

The scenarios in which you want to lock the bins is precisely the scenarios where the locks are likely to fail - crashes.

It's already been reported JAL plane damage was bad enough that intercoms didn't work.

Can't lock them for the full flight, at most you can lock them during first/last 30min ascent/descent. But even there, many incidents begin in the air and precipitate an emergency landing. We will then add another item for the checklist (lock the bins) while they are supposed to be focussed on keeping the plane in the air and safely landing it?

So needless cost & complexity that will have maintenance costs, inconvenience costs.. and then have a high probability of failure in the one case it was designed for anyway.

Many problems are people problems and technology can't solve people.

With roughly half the number of passengers.

And twice as many working exits.

I have taken countless Delta and UA flights. I can attest 100%, had this scenarios happened on those flights, near death certainty for those passengers. 90sec from my years of observations not doable by ANY Delta or UA flights unless maybe small 737 with maybe a third full. Their crews and the type of passengers they have guarantee death in this kind of situation. Heck even if you give them 10 mins instead of 90sec, they still will not make it all out.

> Their crews...guarantee death in this kind of situation

I was recently on a UA flight where, maybe 15 seconds after takeoff, a flight attendant rushed out of her jumpseat to try to shield a passenger from a bag from an overhead bin that had just popped open.

n=1, but when it comes down to it in an emergency situation, I bet the flight crew takes their responsibilities very seriously.

I was going to say the same thing. This is the positive aspect of Japanese/East Asian culture. They give authority figures the benefit of the doubt and will listen to instructions.

Of course, this obedience to authority has a downside. In South Korea, when the Sewol ferry sank, the crew instructed the passengers to stay inside their rooms while they drank beer and abandoned ship. Many of the obedient passengers drowned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

Flames shooting up around the plane after a collision have got to focus the mind of the passengers; so I guess it's hard to compare different incidents.

If they're close to the exit, it's clearly someone else's problem for those that aren't in our culture. If only they'd invested in their personal safety they wouldn't be burning to death and how else will they learn?

It comes to my mind the same scenario in Dubai. In the video you can see people leaving the plane with their luggage.

https://youtu.be/PyNVUXVhnAw

https://youtu.be/OvNT78ICJlg

British Airways flight 2276, 170 passengers and crew. 2 minutes 32 seconds.

>All occupants, including one lap child, and the flight and cabin crewmembers evacuated the airplane through the 1L, 1R, or 4L door slides. (The flight attendants estimated that only five passengers evacuated using the 1L door slide, which was subsequently blocked due to fire.) The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) obtained videos that showed that the evacuation was completed about 2 minutes 32 seconds after the captain's initial command to evacuate.

https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/4367.pdf

TWA Flight 843, 292 passengers and crew. "Less than two minutes"

>All of the flight attendants stated that the evacuation was completed in less than 2 minutes.

https://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/ntsb/aircraf...

Every time I read a comment about JaPaNeSe CuLtUrE I throw up in my mouth a little because was stationed in Japan for a total of three years and their culture is just as fucked as everyone else's... just in different ways.

I think that's reductive orientalism.

I don't know. I've lived in both the Netherlands and Japan, and studied the culture (and language) of the latter. In my experience, groups of Japanese people defer to authority in the case of an emergency with a minimum of fuss, where a group of Dutch would show much more hesitation, scepticism, and sometimes outright hostility in a similar situation.

You're welcome to call that reductive occidentalism.

As a group people from those cultures behave totally differently. I'm not judging either culture with this observation (although I can be quite critical about some aspects of both); it's a simple observable fact.

18 minutes seems like a hell of a long time to get out of a damn burning plane

I've never been to Japan but in the US people are standing and ready to exit as soon as the plane docks to the airport so I can imagine people running for their lives in this scenario.

5 minutes at most would seem more understandable

People running for their lives likely will increase the time to get everybody out.

Two people might try to get out of an exit door simultaneously, or someone might push over another passenger to get to the exit door, making those behind them trip over the fallen passenger, etc.

Curious how high this was upvoted with no evidence. Would imply unconscious bias within HN readership of Japanese as obedient.

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