mcsoft

You are right though pilots prefer to retract flaps soon after liftoff since extended flaps mean more drag and less efficiency. And the danger comes from the low altitude thus no margin for error.

In the doomed ET302 flight they retracted flaps 62 seconds after liftoff at only about 1200ft above the ground. MCAS kicked in 5 seconds later. Had autopilot been engaged it'd also had saved them from MCAS trim down commands.

Official sources deny it, from Wikipedia Aeroflot 1492:

The information that evacuation was delayed because some passengers grabbed their baggage have not been confirmed. According to TASS's law enforcement source the majority of passengers in the tail end of the aircraft had practically no chance of rescue. "This is evidenced by the position of the bodies of many passengers who were found in the tail of the aircraft. They did not even have time to unfasten their seat belts, they died of poisoning in their seats. Someone might have lost consciousness when the plane hit the runway. The causes of death of all the victims are now established" - said the source. He added that the passengers from the tail section of the aircraft, who managed to escape, moved to the front of the aircraft even before it stopped.[10] According to witnesses some baggage fell from overhead compartments during the hard landing and passengers removed them in order to free the passage.[11]

They had to install MCAS because the plane was unstable in high AoA mode, i.e. during takeoff.

And it was unstable because larger CFM engines could not fit under the wing anymore so they had to put it further forward and a bit up. This increased the pitch up moment when a full power is applied.

Also, can't really see how the height of the fuselage above the ground affects fuel efficiency.

It strikes me how a seemingly insignificant decision at the time - to position fuselage slightly higher above the ground - gave Airbus a strategic advantage 50 years later. It forced the competitor into a services of unexplainable and reckless decisions that break basic principles of reliable engineering. Which in turn led to a very visible disastrous business consequences: Boeing had to silently reduce 737 MAX production despite having secured orders for over 5000 planes. A case to be studied in business schools.

Agree. You can't rely on everyone's behaving rationally. You should rather expect panic.

Though knowing there could be smoke or you might need to crawl will trigger thoughts at least in a subset of people and will increase an overall survival rate.

As for life vests - even in Hudson accident they were left unused. Maybe in the 1960s they were helpful but for now they look obsolete. Chances are you'll get fire rather than ditching. I feel their value is more psychological.

I’ve seen many posts like this in Russian media too. While the death toll is huge and the air carrier’s stock has plunged 3% down, there is a natural motivation for existence of social media fakes blaming passengers. Someone shared similar post on Facebook recently from an account that was created a few months ago and has posted only 3 meaningless picture shares ever since. Initially many media outlets did not even mention air carrier’s name in their stories covering the accident.

From multiple video sources it’s clear that the plane caught fire only after violent progressive bouncing on runway. The preceding events (lightning strike, partial radio loss, overweight landing) set up a stage for a disaster but hardly were direct causes of the fire.

Having been a private pilot for a while, we, pilots, are trained for emergencies. For example, my instructor routinely idles engine power without saying a word during flight reviews. On FAA practical test you are supposed to glide and land an airplane that lost power completely. Though I hope to never encounter engine loss in real life, I did dozens of practice approaches with zero power.

However passengers are never trained. This accident’s survivor witnessed that screams started after first bounce. When gear failed and fire ignited on second or third kick screams got louder. One couldn’t hear crew instructions in this mess. You can’t be sure you’d behave rationally until you’re there.

If we want extra safety we should train for rare situations like this. How many ditching incidents you can recall beyond Hudson miracle of 2009? Then why explain how to inflate a life vest every time on board. Shouldn’t we better teach passengers to leave their belongings, to crawl under smoke, to push other people out if they are unconscious? I would create a financial incentive for those travelers who undergone such a training and passed certain test.

Statistically, however, commercial flying today is much safer than traveling by car. In the US alone about 100 people are killed on the road every single day. So if we are optimizing for the number of souls lost during transportation, it is unclear what needs to be fixed with a top priority.