Passenger Boarding Question

[Tex]

This is a very good question, actually. I have seen so many flagrant violations of common sense in regard to this topic.

As a school-trained safety guy, and an airline Director of Safety, I would tend to agree with the FOM's (or OPS MANS, or whatever they are called at your airline) which say that boarding must not be initiated without at least one cockpit crew member on board, and all required cabin crew on board.

Here is my reasoning:

Irregardless of the size of the airplane, communication with the cabin can be difficult, especially during an emergency. The same is true from cabin to cockpit, at times. Therefore, if there is an APU fire (only as an example, I can think of many, many more examples), and there is no cockpit crew on board, who will know to intitiate an evacuation if the APU fire is uncontained? How will the cabin crew know if the APU fire is uncontained until it is entering the cabin, and it is too late to do anything about the spread of the fire?

I have been burned in an airplane fire. One does not necessarily know one is on fire until it is too late. There is always the disbeliefe delay factor, of a few seconds. So, without a cockpit crew receiving the APU fire info, and knowing it is not extinguishing, who is going to initiate the evacutaution within a prudent time? Answer: No one. The cabin crew will discover and react to the fire too slowly, and quite possibly die.

Now, this is not to say the cabin crew should not take intitiative to evavcuate without command from the cockpit. Remember the Saudi 747-300? The cockpit crew was either dead or too engulfed to notify the cabin to evacuate.

Bottom line: COMMUNICATE! If there is a problem, communicate it! Don't be willy-nilly, thinking someone will think you are a doof. If something is out of the norm, report it. If there is no answer from the front and the airplane is on fire, well duh, evacute!

Now, don't do a United in Narita. In Narita, a United 747 had a flame shoot from an engine on start. Not too unusual, but not that common. A cabin crew took it upon herself to initiate an evacutaion of the airplane, without coordinating with the cockpit. This airplane was taxiing, and the cockpit crew was unaware that the cabin was evacuating until the tower asked them their intentions.

Bottom line: COMMUNICATE! As an answer to the primary question, I believe that all cabin crew and at least one cockpit crew be present during boarding.