Questioning Flight Crew SOP's
During the joy that is SEP, for the past couple of years, we have had a section that involves some sort of incident. The flight crew will sit down the front of the mock up with a laptop, which will give them the incident, then various options they can take all the way through. Cabin crew will either "play" the cabin crew or pax. Generally, it works very well as it's entirely dependent on the decisions made by the flight crew, so has different outcomes on each run through. It also gives us a chance to see why things are done, whether they work and in the past, has resulted in various procedures being looked at and if neccessary, changed.
This year, the incident resulted in an evacuation, with a hazard on the left side. Obviously, in normal circumstances, you would hopefully be able to see the hazard, before opening the door, but it's not a guarantee, especially on some of the 737's. (The door windows steam up so badly, you can't see anything out of them!) The flight crew made the PA, as per company SOP's, ordering the evacuation and stating "Left hand side, hazard". The problem is, the minute people hear "evacuate", they tend to jump into action, meaning the hazard message is lost in the melee. Even if we pause, in reality, the passengers won't. In this particular case, the few that did hear the second part, only heard "left". That's fine for us as we know that that would mean there was a hazard on the left, but a passenger, just hearing evacuate and left, would probably instinctively go to the left. While on the larger aircraft, the crew should be able to redirect, it could be a problem on those aircraft with self help exits. As Cabin Crew, we are told never to give negative commands, as people may not hear the full message. So why does this not carry through to the front?
My question is, should I raise this issue as a mere member of cabin crew and if so, how do I do it without risking the wrath of the instructors? I did mention it during the following discussion but was told, pretty sharply, by the flight crew instructor, that that is the SOP!
Thanks
Jsl