  Recent reports of emergency aircraft evacuations have highlighted an
increasing tendency amongst evacuees to ignore clear safety warnings and to
collect and carry personal items of baggage during egress. However, relatively
little work has so far been done on quantifying the impact of such behaviour on
the evacuation process. In this paper, we report the results of validated
simulation experiments (using the Boeing 777 wide-body aircraft), which confirm
that even a relatively low level of baggage collection can significantly delay
evacuation. Our platform provides one possible framework for the investigation
of processes and mitigation tactics to minimise the impact of baggage
collection behaviour in future.
