Aircraft Evacuation

[Compo]

Hi everyone! As part of my Masters degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I’m working on a final year research project at the moment into improving aircraft evacuation. I was hoping to get some input from Flight Deck crew about your experiences please.

Have you ever been involved in an evacuation? What were the circumstances, and what were your impressions of how smoothly it went? Do you have any recommendations for any changes or improvements, either to the aircraft design or to airline procedures, or anything else?

Or even if you haven't been involved an evacuation, I would still appreciate any suggestions or opinions that you may have about how to improve the speed of evacuation or the survivability of a crash.

All comments will be gratefully received! If you would prefer, you could email me in confidence at [email protected].

Thanks very much!! Safe flying!
:p

[Hew Jampton]

1. Slides are only certificated for windspeeds up to 20-25 knots, yet the aircraft can operate in windspeeds of twice that. If the windspeed is too high for the slide it will blow back over the fuselage etc (various post-evacuation photos have shown just that). Certification authorities put their heads in the sand on the consequences of an evacuation in a windspeed above the slide limit.
2. No guidance is given to cabin crew or passengers on how to use the slide with an infant in arms.
3. Despite being told not to, pax insist on taking their duty free bottles etc so that there is a pile of broken glass at the bottom of the slide.
4. Many more flight crew (flight deck and cabin) are injured (and in at least one case killed) during evacuation training than during real emergency evacuations. For this reason, some licensing authorities are withdrawing/limiting the requirement for slide training involving going down the slide.

[ 28 November 2001: Message edited by: Hew Jampton ]

[Compo]

Cheers Hew! ;)

[moggie]

I've done two (a practice and a real run).

On the practice, one of the two slides planned for use failed to inflate so we took about 3 minutes to get 140 well briefed, calm, professional, adult military personnel out of the remaining door. No injuries but little confidence in the kit.

On the real run, 38 pax and 9 crew got out nice and quickly - although it would have been quicker if the firecrews had not tried to put an aluminimum ladder up to the front door. Again, all military personnel, all adult and all had 25 minutes to prepare.

The circumstances of the real evac were a double engine failure and fuel leak on a 4 jet airliner, with fuel dripping onto warm brakes after the emergency landing. No actual fire but the risk meant we took no chances - but again, as there was no actual fire, the lack of panic helped facilitate a safe evac.

I would not like to do it on a burning 747 with 300+ unprepared men, women, children, old folks and drunks!

Have you ever seen the video of the 1970s Pan Am San Francisco accident? Emergency landing, out of trim CofG and strong winds. some slides failed to inflate fully, others blew away in the wind and as the aeroplane tipped onto it's tail, the front slides became vertical and injured a number of people. Again, they had time to plan and had a small pax load.

Hope this is useful.

[Ex Servant]

Having worked as cabin crew on everything from props to jumbos I've seen and tried various slides. The bigger the slide the quicker the evacuation seems to be. One thing we were always taught was to keep the flow of passengers going even on a single person slide. This is not as easy as it sounds. You naturally stop at the top of the slide to allow more space between yourself and the person before you. You also are relying on the ABP's at the bottom to do their job and move people away to prevent a human pile up. What would make more sense would be slides that expand sideways as well as move out from the fuselage. By being slightly wider you could put a divide down the middle and create two lanes. This would give you a greater capacity but without having to make slides the size of some of those on the jumbo. Even with a normal size single door you could then evacuate quicker using the sides alternately. On the smaller single aisle aircraft, the 250 pax or less variety, space is tight, especially in an evacuation. If you can get them moving quicker I think there's more hope. The only technical problems I can see are that a) the floor fittings for this slightly larger, heavier slide would have to be beefed up a bit b) the bussle on the door would be a bit bigger and c) the increased weight will mean more fuel burnt. A reduction in the size of bars carried and number of glass over plastic bottles carried would help to offset this!
Best Regards

[PETERJ]

COMPO
I'm not flight crew but offer the follwing for what it's worth
1 copy request in Cabin Crew forum on this site ?

2 Try WWW.aaib.detr.gov (http://WWW.aaib.detr.gov) for UK's database and full reports of UK incidents. The Kegworth incident of many years ago might be of interest to you.

3 Try www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/month (http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/month) for USA incidents

4 Try www.aviation-safety.net (http://www.aviation-safety.net) for less comprehive database of international incidents.

web page (http://www.aviation-safety.net)

Good luck with Masters.

[CaptAirProx]

In my days of being trained as cabin crew, we watched many videos and discussed many different accidents as case studies. We learnt that passengers really do behave like headless chickens in an emergency.

Most passengers will evacuate an aircraft from the door from which they boarded the aircraft. This may well be the longest way out, even though there is a door behind them. This causes pax to escape against the flow causing confusion between the pax that are going the "right" way. This all ends up in a complete farse with people running everywhere with no orderly flow.

The best form of speeding up an evacuation is education of the pax. This means more thorough briefings given to an attentive pax audience. This would be seen as scare moungering by the pax and would never be taken up.

I remember the seating plan for the B737 Manchester fire, and it is amazing to see who escaped from which seat out of which door. There was just no logic in it at all. Even seats two rows from a door went the other way. Utterly amazing and frightning.

[Compo]

Thanks everyone for the replies - some very interesting and useful comments.
Does anyone know where I could get hold of videos of evacuations, either practice or real (such as the Pan-Am San Francisco one that Moggie mentioned)? I can't find any on the web, is there an organisation likely to be able to provide me with some?

Cheers! :p

[moggie]

The San Franciso B747 was one of British airways own vids (but i don't know where the original footage came from).

As for others - we use a lot of BBC education vids - try them on:
+44 (0)208 576 2541,
or 576 2415
or 576 2521.
Fax +44 (0)208 576 2916
WWW.bbc.co.uk (http://WWW.bbc.co.uk) may lead somewhere (but the web site is dreadful!)

address:
BBC Videos fro Education and Training
Woodlands
80 Wood Lane
London
W1 0TT

[vheijens]

If you are planning to do an evaluation of an evac. Try this:

- Only brief the pax like the cabin crew will do on a regular flight
- do not anounce an emergency but tell the pax that first ten pax out of the airplane receive $1000 cash.

You will now see how it is at a real emergency. Because well informed, calm pax evacuating an aircraft does not exist.

(This test has allready been done on a B747. The evactime was 13 minutes. Remember the legal requiered evactime is 90secs) :)