Million pound dustbin
When the VC10K entered service, it was fitted with an absurd 'escape system' which those of us on the first few courses were taught how to use... One of the prototypes had flown (briefly) with the chute extended, but such was the buffeting that it soon landed.
Having decided to abandon aircraft, the first task was to depressurise. No special system; the pressurisation was turned off and the cabin pressure then rose until the max diff at which the chute could be extended was reached. Meanwhile individual crew members were supposed to struggle back to the pax compartment using walk round oxygen bottles, change to bone domes, don immersion suits and parachutes plus dinghy packs. One pilot was supposed to fly the aircraft from behind his seat, leaning over whilst wearing bone dome, parachute and dinghy pack - with the added fun of the large portable oxygen bottle. Then the chute was to be extended; the sealing strip would probably have been ingested by no.1 & no.2 engines, which RR said would probably lead to uncontained failures...
After 3 of the 4 crew had escaped, the 4th was then supposed to let go of the controls and make his way to the escape chute before jumping out. Whether the loss of 2 engines would have allowed this was open to conjecture.
Needless to say, this expensive farce was soon de-modded and the chute became a convenient place to stow the large blue rubbish bags we used to carry for galley rubbish etc. - hence it became known as the 'million pound dustbin'. On my VC10K course, we all refused to have anything to do with the stupid system, as I told some wandering Air Wheel once (knowing that he was the person who had specified the nonsense), much to the chagrin of my Flt Cdr who was giving me 'please shut up' looks. "Hmmph, I think you chaps are very important and should have an escape system", mumbled the multi-starred one. "But not so important as to have Martin Baker seats?", I queried.... "Places to go, people to see, good morning" came the reply.
There was also a low level override button which enabled the air engineer to transfer all tanker fuel to receivers when operated. Quite who dreamed up that daft idea, I do not know as no-one in their right mind would ever use it - if it was a choice between a receiver running out of fuel or the tanker giving it all away and having to ditch, well, the receiver crews all had bang seats!