Crash Landing Preparedness

Waiting for disembarking passengers to get their luggage out of the overhead compartments is bad enough. Waiting for them to do it seconds before your plane explodes — that is a real problem. If you don’t think this could possibly be a thing, we suggest reviewing images from this week’s crash landing of an Emirates plane coming into Dubai from Kerala.

You’d think as a species we might have evolved to the point where a weekend’s worth of clothing would be less interesting to us than actually escaping a soon-to-be-burning plane. Fact: In stressful situations, our animal brains revert to what we know — and what we know is that when we get off a plane, we get our luggage.

All this is a good reminder that it’s valuable to review a few safety procedures specific to crash landings. The Points Guy has them. They begin with “Pay attention to safety announcements,” and conclude with our personal favorite: “Leave everything else [but your passport] behind”. All are worth perusing before your next trip to the stars.

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.