A bit of thread drift....
handling of the Air France evacuation
My knowledge of this evacuation is limited to the information I gained watching it nearly live on Toronto TV at the time, later attending a TSB seminar on the subject.
Memorable from the TSB seminar for me were the following points:
TSB interviewed every passenger ('cause they all lived!) as to their personal exit path from the cabin, and exist used. These were presented to the audience as several hundred coloured lines overlayed on the cabin diagram, so they could be shown or hidden one by one, and that passenger's personal path shown. It was spaghetti, with many passengers doubling back more than once, so it looked like sewing in the aisle. This was explained by the TSB investigator explaining that the cabin crew had provided very conflicting instruction for exit, depending upon a pax location in the cabin. Great delay was cause with opposing direction pax in the aisle.
The audience was told that a left front slide deployed in a "V" shape and inadequate regard was given for the pax clearing at the bottom (now the middle of the "V") before the next pax landed on top of them, resulting in broken bone injuries.
Also a right front slide deployed into a river, so all those exiting pax ended up in the water, which in this case was not a serious problem, as it was a shallow river, but in principle was not a great way to get out.
But yes, at the end of the day, everyone got out alive, and in the highest order of things, you have to give a thumbs up for that. The point of the seminar I attended was that evacuation disorganization resulted in delays, and unsafe conditions relative to the ideal, intended procedure. Yes, I suppose some armchair quarterback, but that is what the TSB is suppose to do!