Just to clarify some misconceptions mentioned by various posters above:
- Daylight and night: Quito is still well into the tropics, so the dawn-time is something like 15 minutes in winter. It gets dark awfully fast. So during a 'slow' evacuation it is very well possible that you start during the day and end up at night.
- The A340 is build in good, trusty, proven aluminium. There is NO carbon fibre fuselage to damage. There are, however, a diverse number of fairings that are of non-metallic materials (mostly composites) which have shed off during the incident.
- The A340-600 is only operated into Quito by IBERIA. This is one of the cases you prefer to have a quad than an twin...