CNN
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Airplane overhead compartments. Residence to baggage of all sizes and styles, the odd coat or two, a number of duty-free baggage, a good bit of mud and… passengers?

Final week, a video was posted on TikTok showing to depict a traveler on a Southwest Airways flight peering out from inside an overhead locker. The clip rapidly unfold throughout social media, though the unique TikTok appears to have since been deleted.

It’s not the primary time a video like this has hit the web. In 2019, a flight attendant – additionally on a Southwest flight – was captured on movie poking their head out of an overhead compartment. On the time, the airline launched a press release saying the crew member was having fun with “a quick second of enjoyable,” earlier than confirming “this isn’t our regular process.”

A Southwest consultant instructed CNN Journey the airline was additionally “conscious” of final week’s locker incident and is presently “trying into it.”

Given passengers are suggested to remain of their seats all through a aircraft journey – normally with their seatbelt mounted – it ought to go with out saying that climbing into the overhead locker is a foul concept.

As British flight attendant Kris Main tells CNN Journey, the overhead bin is “not a certifiable place to be as a passenger.”

“If we encountered turbulence they might get harm – in the event that they received blown out they might actually get harm they usually might additionally harm somebody beneath them,” says Main, including {that a} passenger in an overhead bin additionally wouldn’t have entry to an oxygen masks within the occasion of an emergency.

His phrases are echoed by Guido van Geenen, vice chairman of company communications for overhead bin provider Diehl Aviation. Van Geenen tells CNN Journey that whereas the lockers are designed to accommodate “various weight” that doesn’t imply they’re a protected place for passengers.

“Climbing out and in of an overhead bin may additionally be harmful,” provides van Geenen.

To be able to get right into a locker, an individual must clamber onto the again of the airplane seat, which might buckle underneath the burden.

Van Geenen additionally makes the necessary level that “bins shouldn’t have a strategy to open them from the within” – that means if you happen to’re inside a locker and somebody closes it from the skin “you could have an issue.”

“All in all, we positively don’t advocate utilizing the overhead bins for a nap,” says van Geenen. “They’re designed to securely maintain the passengers’ baggage, however not made for an off-the-cuff nap.”

Flight attendant Main’s witnessed loads in his 25 years of flying, however he’s by no means truly seen a traveler inside the bags bin.

“If I noticed a passenger making an attempt to climb into an overhead locker, it will take me a number of seconds to imagine that was what was occurring in entrance of me,” he says.

That mentioned, Main admits he has “seen images of crew in lockers” and suggests it’s the type of factor that, whereas “fairly frowned upon” does occur now and again when crew have the plane to themselves earlier than boarding.

Whereas there’s been a latest uptick in unruly passenger conduct on airplanes, Main says that if he encountered a passenger contained in the locker, he wouldn’t routinely assume they had been being intentionally disruptive.

His purpose, at the start, can be to “simply get them out” and guarantee they had been protected.

“It might rely upon why they had been up there as to my response,” says Main. “I’d get them out, after which confirm what was happening. I’d assume that they had been both underneath the affect of one thing, or mentally unwell.”

If a passenger spots one other passenger inside an overhead locker, Main advises they notify a crew member, fairly than intervene themselves – this similar recommendation applies if passengers witness any untoward or uncommon conduct on board.

“A passenger might inadvertently create a passenger disruption incident, as a result of they might create battle – whereas the crew are skilled to de-escalate,” Main says.

Main additionally discourages passengers from filming and posting about an incident like this one. What would possibly appear to be a humorous viral second might have detrimental penalties, says Main, particularly if the individual within the video is already weak.

Whereas the airplane overhead locker is presently out of bounds for passengers, some as-yet-to-be-realized airplane cabin ideas reimagine this space as an area for vacationers to stretch out and loosen up mid-flight.

Take Toyota Boshoku’s CLOUD CAPSULE idea, which envisages the world above the economic system seat as an extra house for passengers to retreat to as soon as the airplane reaches cruising altitude. In 2021, this design was nominated for a Crystal Cabin Award, a prestigious aviation design prize.

Whereas this idea may appear futuristic, the thought of passengers making use of the overhead locker house has some precedent. Approach again within the Nineteen Fifties, vacationers who flew with Pan American Airways throughout the Atlantic on the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser had been capable of sleep in overhead compartments mid-flight.

Main says flight attendants “at all times look out for future developments,” however he suggests crew are extra centered on overhead lockers changing into greater to accommodate extra baggage, fairly than being tailored to accommodate passengers.

“Hand baggage is likely one of the greatest points going through flight attendants,” says Main. “It causes issues if we will’t get all these baggage away or if we will’t get passengers to place their baggage away or in the event that they’re bringing an excessive amount of on…”

On most flights, overhead locker house is “at a premium” as Main places it. Bins are so full of vacationers’ baggage and belongings that the thought of an individual squeezing in there too is laughable.

However Main is eager to emphasize that whereas the thought of somebody climbing into the overhead locker would possibly “appear humorous,” it’s necessary to recollect an airplane cabin is a really particular surroundings and security restrictions are there for a cause.

“You’re barrelling by way of the sky at 35,000 ft – 500, 600 miles per hour,” he says. “You don’t wish to create a problem on board the plane, it’s not the place to do it.”