All 379 people aboard the burning Japan Airlines plane were saved after a collision with another Coast Guard plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport that killed five of the smaller plane’s six crew members on Tuesday.
A video shows passengers being evacuated from the burning Airbus A350 by escape slides in relative calm and apparently without hand luggage, in an operation hailed as a “miracle”.
Aviation safety agencies have warned for years that Pausing to pick up carry-on luggage puts lives at risk during an evacuation.
Below are the main milestones in passenger aircraft evacuations in recent decades:
Evacuation has been a key safety priority since at least the mid-1980s, when a British Airtours Boeing 737 was engulfed in flames at Britain’s Manchester Airport, killing 55 people.
Investigators of the 1985 disaster said the leading cause of death was smoke inhalation due to delays in opening doors and restricted access to emergency exits.
A 2000 American safety study said that, on average, an aircraft evacuation for any cause occurs every 11 days. These events typically only make headlines when a fire is involved, but have led to improvements in door mechanisms and emergency lighting.
However, new challenges are emerging due to the amount of luggage passengers can carry on board.
Air crash investigators have recommended stricter in-flight briefings to urge passengers to leave such belongings behind when ordered to evacuate, but often to little effect.
In 2016, Amateur video showed passengers blocking aisles and grabbing bags from overhead bins as the cabin of an Emirates plane filled with smoke in Dubai. The cabin crew were praised for managing to evacuate all 300 people, despite the panic.
In 2018, the Royal Aeronautical Society of Great Britain recommended the automatic locking of overhead compartments after a hard landingnoting that passengers often ignore safety instructions.
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“It’s clearly a benefit if you don’t carry your luggage,” said Steve Creamer, an aviation safety consultant and former senior director of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), following Tuesday’s crash in Tokyo.
“It’s pretty remarkable that they got everyone off the plane. “That says a lot about the flight crew and the discipline of the people on board.”