Comment by MBCook
3 years ago
You’re not supposed to take anything on the slides. No luggage. No shoes. Just you.
But it is ignored. Which is sad, people could really get hurt.
Your right though the fact as many people comply as they do is kind of incredible given how people act in other situations.
Yeah, according to the linked article 5 - 10% of people are injured using the escape slides, which is why they waited for the stairs in this case.
They took out per shoes away so that was that. According to a parallel reply, they no longer do that.
Why in the world do you have to take your shoes off before going down the slides? I could understand jackets or jewelry, but shoes?
As silly as it might seem, you do something enough times and oddball rare things happen .. this is an instruction intended to reduce:
* shoes | boots with sharp objects embedded in soles (glass, bent nails)
* extra spikey high heels,
* work boots with hard edged metal hooks for laces,
(etc) causing damage to both inflatable slipways and to other passengers.
How often has a passenger going down an emergancy slide caused a rip that deflated that slide?
Not very often .. and aircrew are taught to issue instructions that make that as an unlikely occurence as possible.
Also, try to swim/stay afloat with shoes ... Apart from young athletes, most people will drown within a minute
2 replies →
And if something gets caught on the slide as you go down you could fall a dozen or more feet onto hard asphalt. Friend fell on a slide and got a compound leg fracture.
Many shoes have hard, sharp parts that could damage the slide, even to the point of complete deflation. There is no time to assess whose shoes would be safe and whose not, so the blanket rule is "no shoes".
High heels are not OK, for obvious reasons. Regular shoes are fine.
They confiscated all our shoes. Crashing into someone at the bottom with shoes could be a problem too.
Huh. That sounded wrong so I googled it. I thought it was all shoes.
You’re right. What I said above used to be true. That seems to have been questioned in the 90s and in 2000 the FAA finalized a rule changing it.
The current recommendation (https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_safe/information) say you can keep your shoes on but to remove high heels, as you said.
A bit of googling says it was changed because of passengers injuring their feet on the terrain/debris after crashes. Additionally modern slides are much tougher than they used to be and won’t tear from shoes and probably even high heels.
But I bet high heels are probably not a smart thing to be wearing on possibly uneven debris covered terrain in an emergency when you need to move fast and safely.
Learn something new every day.
Not just high heels, but also many boots have sharp protrusions (e.g. lace hooks on some hiking boots and work boots, metal decorations on goth and cowboy boots)
Ahh that makes way more sense. Thanks.