BOAC 'I think the point that TC was making was that since there were no pax and there was no immediate danger to the crew (or the pilots would have left!) the crew were in practice just being sensible! '
When you hear Evacuate in the back you dont know if there is immediate danger to the crew! for all intense purposes there is and this is why this move is taken...
'or else the pilots would have left'....when a severe emergency arises such as an engine fire etc we dont just jump out of the window, we have a checklist of things to get done to reduce the risk of us all going up. These guys were being careful but as I said they evacuated this one cc member to take her/him out of the equation. To walk back just put another body on the line.
Simple way of stating it...evacuate heard,
case a. cc member gets off A/C walks away to await instructions that he/she i would think will get from the F/D as part of there take control left/rightAll survive, FD walk down stairs, false alarm, de brief correct sop actions and look at anything to learn
case b. cc member doesn't follow sop's, walk towards fd door, interupts flow of FD sop's, gets shouted at, all get off as false alarm
case c. cc member doesn't follow sop's, walk towards fd door, in addition to cabin smoke the fd now get ATC message that fire engulfing underside of A/c, FD jump out of windows , run away from A/C to take charge and cant find CC member, cc member still trying to get into cockpit, Boom!
TC yes the SOP in the back is to put the masks that fall down in front of you on?