Aircraft Evacuation

[Compo]

Hi everyone! As part of my Masters degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I’m working on a final year research project at the moment into improving aircraft evacuation. I was hoping to be able to get some opinions from cabin crew please about your experiences or thoughts.

Have you ever been involved in an evacuation? What were the circumstances, and what were your impressions of how smoothly it went? Do you have any recommendations for any changes or improvements, either to the aircraft design or to airline procedures, or anything else?

Or even if you haven't been involved an evacuation, I would still appreciate any suggestions or opinions that you may have about how to improve the speed of evacuation or the survivability of a crash.

All comments will be gratefully received! If you would prefer, you could email me in confidence at [email protected].

Thanks very much!! Safe flying!
:cool:

[ 28 November 2001: Message edited by: Compo ]

[gadgetman]

I've only experienced an evacuation from the outside, in my previous job as a firefighter. Even then it wasn't the full shebang, and the pax were relatively calm about the whole thing.

I can only imagine what a genuine evac would be like, but even during training on the simulator, with fully prepped crew, its like trying to herd a stampede of wild buffalo (no offence to fellow crew intended) through the eye of a needle.

From an engineering perspective, the biggest issue I have is the lack of visibility. If we evacuate, we have to make sure that the area outside the door is safe. Considering that there are two enormous wings full of fuel vapour immediately outside, theres potential for a lot of danger. (Its unrealistic to engineer an aircraft with the wings well away from the doors I guess).
The doors come equipped with a tiny portal window, or none at all. It takes too long to be able to accurately assess the outside conditions and slows things up. If its at night, or smoke is everywhere, mistakes could easily be made.

The slides don't have a large runoff area at the base, if the a/c lands on the undercarriage. This could lead to pax landing on one another at the bottom, and creating further injury. it also makes for a steep angle for the slide itself.

The doors allow for one or two pax side by side to deplane. It would be tempting to request for wider doorways, although the downside is that the evacuation would be less controllable for the hosties.

Facing all the seats backwards would increase the survival of the initial impact. The travelling public might take some convincing of this however.

When there is an evacuation, some nice little exit signs come on, like you see in the movie theatres. Whether anyone would actually take notice of these whilst evacuating in a mad panic is debatable. Some diffused (so as not to blind everyone)yet powerful lights around the door frame that come on once the slide is inflated would be more of an incentive for people to aim for. (I can imagine people talking about it like a near death epxperience however "I was in a dark tunnel, with a bright light at the end").

This is about all that springs to mind right now, email if you want to clarify any of this, or have any other Q's
[email protected]

[Deep Cover Gecko]

Compo - a few ideas that you might be interested to hear about with regards to evacuating aircraft.

As gadgetman says, the lack of visibility is a big point. Over or under wing exits tend to have better visibility as they are windows (at least on all the aircraft I've operated on!). However, the main doors are very different. I found that when a telescopic viewer was fitted it was still difficult to have a realistic view of what was outside - even under normal conditions it is sometimes difficult to see obvious things like a GPU.

Another factor with over/underwing exits is the lack of space to move the window. I believe (and may be wrong), that after the Manchester accident, the AAIB recommended a better seat pitch around these rows, but airlines have been reluctant to introduce this.

I also feel that it would be difficult for cabin crew to control passengers around exits as there is not enough space. SOPs state that you stand by the exit and shout at the passengers to move towards you, giving a "helping hand" to anybody that hesitates at the top of the slide. Most of the aircraft I have worked on tend to have bulkheads either side of the door, which makes that particular instruction rather hard to follow! It could also be problematic as once you have opened the door, people are going to want to get out ASAP, and will not want to move back to let you back into the cabin.

If you'd like any more information then feel free to e-mail me.

[ 03 December 2001: Message edited by: Deep Cover Gecko ]