Air passengers care for laptops instead of dear life
When the Dubai-bound Thiruvananthapuram Emirates flight crash-landed at Dubai airport and went up in flames minutes later, the first thought going on in the minds of the passengers on board was not escape and evacuation, but their hand luggage. Amateur video recordings inside the plane in the immediate aftermath of the crash show passengers trying to pull out their bags from overhead bins despite the emergency. An NDTV report says that a passenger can be heard shouting, "Laptop, laptop," while other passengers reach for their luggage, ignoring the pleas from the crew to use the slide and flee. There were nearly 300 people on board, most of them from Kerala since the flight took off from Thiruvananthapuram. "Chute, chute, chute," a flight attendant shouts. "Jump the slide, jump the slide," she urges asking passengers to forget their bags. The passengers held up the process of evacuation by taking their bags out of the overhead luggage compartments. The video shows fire near one of the engines shortly before the aircraft burst into flames. No passenger died and only 10 were slightly injured, but a firefighter was killed when the flames spread, and he has been hailed a hero for saving countless lives. The cause of the crash is not known. The plane had apparently aborted the landing and had been about to go-around for another landing when it crashed on the runway, wheels up.
