Slides and Fuel
To become preoccupied that the lack of Fire is an indication of Fuel stavation is surely a blind alley... I can think of any number of incidents with a fuel load that have not resulted in a fire - BY in Girona, Southwest in a Petrol Station somewhere in USA, TNT without LDG Gear to name but three off the top of my head. I'm not a fuel expert but I would have thought that in the case of Fuel Starvation without the much talked about fuel tank inertion system the risk of explosion is much higher as Fuel/Air Vapour mix is far more volatile than fuel in it's liquid form...
To clarify the escape slide deployment issue - on a B737NG aircraft the 4 Door Slides are all the same, they are stored on the door and held to the rest of the fuselage by a girt bar which is attached to the floor when the doors are placed in "automatic" - the action of opening the door in this state pulls the inflatable slide away from its storage container and pack board- if the aircraft were on its Gear away from obstructions the inflatable would unravel and the inflation bottle would be activated by the drop (think of a pin being removed from a hand granade) if this does not happen for whatever reason there is a red tag handle that can be pulled to activate the bottle. Aspirators etc then kick in to assist in the quick inflation of the inflatable.
In this particular case given the distance from ground to door sill I would have thought that fully inflated slides would have hampered evacuation - think of trying to run on a bouncy castle or bungy cord game...Perhaps it is evidence of quick, clear decisive action and professionalism by those crew able to function in the immediate aftermath of the incident...
On inspection of the R1 Door in the photos posted it is clear that the slide remains in it's bussel and the girt bar is intact and hanging from the door indicating a disarming before opening. I think the fact that the red strip is still over the door window indicates nothing - would you really remove it in the heat of an emergency evacuation?
I am not speculating here - just the opposite trying too stop such conversation.
Last edited by Cytherea; 25th Feb 2009 at 13:45.