You video does not show that JAL516 took twenty seconds to come to a stop. It's 20 seconds from the start of recording. It appears to be already on the ground and on fire when that video starts.

As you correctly point out, it also shows people were evacuated by 8 minutes or so, not 18 minutes.

Which is why people are picking on you for writing "eighteen minutes to evacuate a burning aircraft is completely unacceptable."

You call it nitpicking, but we all disagree.

> I fail to see how it has lost its relevancy in the forty four years

Because training has changed since then. TIL about Air Canada Flight 797 in 1983. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_797 :

"The accident became a watershed for global aviation regulations, which were changed in the aftermath of the accident to make aircraft safer. New requirements to install smoke detectors in lavatories, strip lights marking paths to exit doors, and increased firefighting training and equipment for crew became standard across the industry, while regulations regarding evacuation were also updated. Since the accident, it has become mandatory for aircraft manufacturers to prove their aircraft could be evacuated within 90 seconds of the commencement of an evacuation, and passengers seated in overwing exits are now instructed to assist in an emergency situation."

My limited understanding from reading the transcript was the pilot wasn't really aware of the issue, the cabin crew wanted to know if they needed to evacuate after landing, the captain eventually said no, and that's why people believe there wasn't an evacuation.

My understanding of airplane operations in the 1970s was it was a hierarchical command structure, with the pilot in charge. This changed in the 1980s, as people found out that doesn't work well as the captain can be overloaded and make bad decisions. I understand the cabin crew now is able to order an evacuation on their own (could they then? I don't know), and are better trained on how to do so than 40 years ago.

> I argue that after a crash on land, barring smoke or fire immediately outside the exit, you should evacuate the plane immediately.

Please define "crash".

Ryanair FR5542 had a nose-gear failure during an emergency landing at Dublin airport. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGH67ftoJVA with sparks flying. Evacuation took over an hour. See https://youtu.be/bw4T4XJEqhU?t=3901 for the first passengers coming out.

Was that a crash? If so, following your guideline you would have evacuated immediately, right?

If not, what was it?

(JetBlue Flight 292 was another case; broken nose gear, which "generated sparks and flames when it touched down" during an emergency landing, and people began to disembark "less than seven minutes" after stopping, via airport stairs instead of evacuation slide; quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292 .)

Let's take the example I was thinking of, with overheated brakes and fuel leaking - Was Qantas Flight 32 a crash?

It suffered an uncontained failure of one engine while in flight, another engine couldn't be shut down after an emergency landing. "The pilots considered whether to evacuate the plane immediately after landing, as fuel was leaking from the left wing near to the brakes, which were assumed to be extremely hot from maximum braking" but, quoting the pilot:

"We’ve got a situation where there is fuel, hot brakes, and an engine that we can’t shut down. And really the safest place was on board the aircraft until such time as things changed. So, we had the cabin crew with an alert phase the whole time through ready to evacuate, open doors, inflate slides at any moment. As time went by, that danger abated, and thankfully, we were lucky enough to get everybody off very calmly and very methodically through one set of stairs."

All from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32 .

If that was a crash, would you have disobeyed the crew and evacuated anyway?

If it was not a crash as you define it, how could a passenger tell it was not a crash?