Airline pilot here. You'll possibly have noticed me ranting away on threads in the past about hand baggage, and here's another rant as this is something that affects me daily at work.
IMO the amount of baggage people are allowed to take into the cabin should be seriously curtailed. There have now been numerous cases of crashing and burning aircraft where people have stopped to grab their bags, sometimes very large and unwieldy bags, and slowed down the evacuation. As flight crew we have watched these incredulously, and still cannot believe that passengers are allowed to take so much unnecessary stuff into the cabin with them. I vividly remember watching the Las Vegas BA aircraft fire - I was under training onto a new aircraft type, the type that was on fire, and we had just arrived in the States after a training sector. Me, the captain and the trainer went down to the bar for buffalo wings and a pint and the TV in the bar was playing live footage from a passenger's phone as the evacuation was actually taking place. The first thing all of us said was 'Fucckkkk!!!!' and then the next thing was to comment on the ridiculous amount of luggage that passengers were jumping down the slide with. Similarly large amounts of baggage was taken off in the Emirates evacuation. We commented at the time that this would eventually lead to deaths, and tragically it has.
There needs to be a wholesale change in the way that people think about air travel. These days tickets to travel across countries are often cheaper by air than by rail. People are encouraged to think of aircraft as being like a big bus. But they aren't. When you travel somewhere by air, you are travelling in a metal tube pressurised to up to 9 times the outside air pressure, loaded with up to 120000kg of aviation fuel. It needs to reach speeds of up to 180mph on the ground in order to take off and travels through the air at speeds of up to 700mph.
Hand baggage slows every bit of an airport down - huge queues at security, long slow boarding and disembarkation while everyone tries to shoehorn their bag in the locker, because people have got everything they think they need for a 2 week holiday in Marbella in a wheelie bag in order to avoid a hold baggage fee or because they want the extra 15 minutes that they feel is wasted waiting by the baggage carousel. Everyone has a story about the time an airline lost their or their friend's bag, but rarely is it the case that it is the end of the world. Usually the airline gives you a payout to buy yourself clothing and toiletries to last you till your bag turns up a day or two later. I've been travelling professionally and as a passenger for over 20 years and only had 2 bags lost out of up to 26 flights a month for those 20+ years. And no, they don't make a more special effort not to lose crew bags - they make a special effort not to lose anyone's bags and when they do it's an accident - lost bags cost the airline lots of money and they'd really rather everyone's bags just got to where they were supposed to be.
Look at any forum and you'll find threads started by people who are wondering about just how much hand baggage they can get away with, and how to cram it on. On MN people proudly boast about how much hand baggage they can take into the cabin. On the skiing forums I go on people are discussing how to get their ski boots on as hand luggage. What about their priceless violins, their wedding dresses, their special expensive pram, the list goes on. None of it NEEDS to be in the cabin, yet people would argue it is too precious to them to put it in the hold.
Which brings me to to a thought on human behaviour. many posters on this thread already have said that in an emergency situation, people don't always behave rationally. If that is the case, and they can be forgiven for behaving irrationally and grabbing their bags, surely it's not too much of a logic leap to suggest the choice to take their bags on board should be removed? No wheelie bag overhead = no one trying to fumble for their suitcase in an evacuation. We keep relying on passengers to behave like grown ups, but time and time again the travelling public prove that on the whole they behave like they left their brain behind when they turn up at the airport and an emergency does not improve their mental faculties.
British Airways in 2015, American Airlines in 2016, Delta Airways and Emirates also in 2016. All with very detailed photos and video footage of passengers jumping down evacuation slides with armfuls of luggage while the plane burned behind them.
If the passengers won't or can't change their behaviour I think it inevitable that it will be changed for them.