Locking overhead compartments in an emergency

I would fully support this.

but you also have the personal item issue.

It's leave all items behind (and if you are on my flight and it's evacuated and you think your stuff is that valuable prepare to be physically shoved back in an empty row..... I'm not dying for your trash)

I'm with Carol. But I'm thinking that locking the overheads could cause more of a problem.

I think Sempre Italia is right. I picture an angry mob of "me first" passengers banging on the bin doors trying to force them open while the ever-angrier mob behind them trample the weak.

Let’s fervently hope that that situation never happens to any one of us.
I put my passport and bank cards and a small paper with emergency information on it into my under clothing money belt.
I put it back on after security and wear it for the whole flight.
I can’t feel it but feel safer having it on me rather than in a personal bag that I wouldn’t be allowed to evacuate with.

I think the real lesson is to have what you need to survive an emergency on your person while you fly. For me, that is my passport, my cellphone, and my credit cards. I can replace everything else fairly easily if needed. These all fit in a zippered pocket in my "airplane pants." Others may need to add a day or two worth of prescriptions to the mix.

People who sit in bulkhead seats or emergency exit row seats are often required to have all items in the overhead bins for take off and landings. You certainly couldn't expect them to be locked away from personal item for an entire flight. Often families with small children need to put some of their supplies up in the bins and access them during the flight, particularly on long haul flights.

I understand the thought of locking the bins, but I'm not sure it is the real solution.

I was thinking about this on my recent trip as I sat through safety briefings on 6 different flights. Currently, all the spiel says about that is to leave the aircraft "taking nothing with you." That's pretty weak tea. It needs to be strengthened and emphasized, for example, "...taking nothing with you, because if you stop to grab your precious freaking bag, PEOPLE MAY DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH BECAUSE OF YOU. And even if they don't, if we identify you, you will have to pay a huge honking fine that costs way more than the pitiful collection of yoga pants in your bag."

Well, maybe not quite that, but you get the idea.

Not that anyone (except me) who has ever flown more than once listens to the safety briefing anyway. Sigh.

just one more thing to go wrong, a possibly delay takeoff.......

Fines and threats won't stop the DYKWIA group who think THEIR stuff is so important.

Sad but true, Carol. But might cut down some of it from the folks who aren't obnoxious, just clueless.

If I'm interpreting the article correctly, they wouldn't be locked the whole flight, but would be locked should an emergency happen, maybe even during turbulence or when the seat belt light is on.

or when the seat belt light is on

Also known as "always" on US carriers. Pilots on European carriers are so much freer with turning the seatbelt light off.

I agree—get up and exit, which means leave your stuff.

We frequently travel in a bulkhead seat and must have all of our bags, including a medical bag, stored overhead during take off and landing. Prescription bottles, and there are several, are overhead in the tagged medical bag with the CPAP. I need to alter our packing process to make sure we have a few days supply of our meds in a container on our person throughout the flight in case of an emergency exit. If we ended up doing without the CPAP for a few days after an emergency it would be less than ideal, but a very small price to pay for a safe exit for us and our fellow passengers. We just need to plan accordingly.

Locking the overhead compartments during flights is an interesting idea and it could solve the problem. However this would have to be designed to be done automatically and quickly during an emergency. Flight attendants wouldn't have time to lock each compartment manually. It would be necessary to "educate" passengers and make it quite clear that they will not have access to their luggage during emergency conditions.

I've seen a few post crash interviews with passengers who have confronted those who retrieved their carry on luggage before exiting. The usual answer they get from those who have their luggage, is that they really don't care what the rules are.... they consider themselves more important than any rules. They also don't care if they're endangering the lives of those behind them. Fortunately these cases have always been with flights that were safely evacuated despite the selfish behaviour of some passengers.

I suppose this is a symptom of the sense of entitlement and disregard of laws that seems to be prevalent with some people these days.

I agree with most of these posts, but a small amount of blame goes to the airlines for charging fees to check luggage. When the Federal government took over paying to screen bags (from the airlines), they should have extracted a promise to check one bag for free,

It is also tied into the now common behaviors that manifest as "it's all about ... ME ... and my needs."

I don't understand why this is relate to checked bag fees?

If you are evacuating in an emergency even if your checked bag was "free" you would not have access to it?

"I don't understand why this is relate to checked bag fees?"

I assume their thinking is that fees for checked bags have led more people to do carry-on only, with bigger bags packed with more stuff than they might have previously done. And if all their stuff is RIGHT THERE, by golly, they're going to try to evacuate with it.

So until last year, I think it was Southwest had free check bags

And yeah, on every southwest plane, the overhead bins were full. I don’t think it was the checked bag fee that was filling up the overhead bins on an airline that had free checked bags.