Glasgow Airport - JET 2 smoke in cockpit - emergency services called

[Heathrow Harry]

BBC News - Glasgow Airport evacuation: Passenger tells of panic on Jet2 plane (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-20001291)

Emergency services attend airport

The emergency services have been called to an incident at Glasgow Airport.
Firefighters from Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service were called to assist their colleagues based at the airport.


Police officers have also attended. The alarm was raised at about 07:45.
It is understood the incident involved an aircraft which was on the ground.


later

Firefighters are attending an emergency evacuation of an aircraft at Glasgow Airport.
The captain of a Jet2 aircraft preparing to depart for Alicante declared an emergency at about 07:40. It is believed smoke had been detected in the cockpit.
Passengers and crew left the aircraft using the emergency exits.
One woman passenger is reported to have been injured, although it is not thought her injuries are serious.
Strathclyde Fire and Rescue have been called out to assist firefighters based at the airport.

[OntimeexceptACARS]

Must have been on the runway, as all arrivals diverting, unless its fire cover related.

[teen_pilot_95]

737-800 too. Not even a 'Jet2 use old planes thats probably why' argument.

Hope everything turns out to be ok and its only a very minor fault.

http://nfs.stvfiles.com/imagebase/165/623x349/165389-glasgow-airport-plane-grounded-after-reports-of-smoke-filling-the-cabin.jpg
Picture from STV

[OntimeexceptACARS]

Aircraft reported as G-GDFJ.

[Heathrow Harry]

from STV

http://nfs.stvfiles.com/imagebase/165/623x349/165390-the-jet2com-flight-was-evacuated-after-reports-of-smoke-filling-the-cabin.jpg
A plane was evacuated from a plane at Glasgow Airport amid reports of the cabin filling with smoke as it began to take off.
Firefighters were called to the airport, which prompted the evacuation of the plane using the emergency chute.
The Scottish Ambulance Service said it was treating four passengers for chest and hip injuries, which are believed to be minor.
Smoke filled the cabin of the Jet2.com plane during take off, which prompted the emergency evacuation of it. Emergency services were alerted at around 7.40am on Friday to the incident on the Jet2.com plane on the runway.
It is understood all passengers on the flight were able to get off using the emergency chutes. The Boeing 737-800 was due to fly to Alicante in Spain on Friday morning.
Strathclyde Fire and Rescue said it has sent three appliances to the scene.
The runway remains closed and Glasgow Airport has advised travellers to expect disruption on Friday, with several flights being diverted to other airports, including Edinburgh.

[dunkphilip]

@teen_pilot_95: The aircraft is in its thirteenth year so qualifies as old in my book !

[teen_pilot_95]

In fairness, not as old as the 733QCs on the go.

[pinkpyjama]

Can we stop the 'oh they use old aircraft' argument here, hardly the point on this one is it?
Looks like a well executed (ok scary for pax) full evacuation. Investigations will reveal more as and when they are forthcoming.
It's what we all train for so initially lets congratulate the whole crew for their decision making whilst wishing anyone hurt has not been too badly. A rubbish start to their holiday but professionals acted quickly to ensure it was only their holiday that has been affected.
Bring on the DM and other trash journos - I can hardly wait. Meanwhile I look forward to learning the full facts so we are all reminded that it could happen to us.

[zerotohero]

Anyone have the METAR from that take off time?

[17PA]

What relevance will the METAR have here?

[ezydriver]

De icing maybe?

[tubby linton]

What relevance will the METAR have here?

The temperature for a start.The aircraft may have been deiced and it could have been deicing fluid not smoke that the crew saw.
Not the latest one but it didn't seem that cold for Glasgow:
EGPF 182350Z 06008KT 9999 -RADZ SCT013 SCT025 BKN035 09/08 Q1004

[Fostex]

Hooray, nonsense season has started again.

Jet2 738 smoke in cabin, crew evacuated pax, pax slightly injured. Airport fire crew deployed as expected. No drama.

Move on.

[j636]

Hooray, nonsense season has started again.

Jet2 738 smoke in cabin, crew evacuated pax, pax slightly injured. Airport fire crew deployed as expected. No drama.

Move on.


Bet if it was a Ryanair aircraft it would be discussed here for months and months...

would also say it may be de icing fluid a FR flight at KIR a few years ago had an runway evaction because they thought it was "smoke".

[teen_pilot_95]

Aircraft operations starting to return to normal at GLA now, according to their t witter feed.

[buzz boy]

nice video of the evacuation from the BBC

BBC News - Plane evacuated at Glasgow Airport (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-20003986)

[Heathrow Harry]

amazing how the number of "injured" has gone from a couple to 14..... no doubt once the lawyers arrive it'll be 189

[Brom]

I'm a rotary man myself and don't profess to know much about workings of a 737, however, according to BBC Scotland News and Jim Ferguson, the well know Aberdeen aviation journalist...

I suspect this will have been caused by oil from either the Auxiliary Power Unit or the engine getting into the air conditioning system.
Once the oil heats up it creates smoke and fumes, which can be toxic. Of course, it shouldn't happen, but it does occasionally, perhaps two or three times a year in the UK.
So, there you have it, sorted...:E

[Jet Jockey A4]

So what language are they speaking in that evacuation video? :-)

[Telstar]

The Queens English.

[Jet Jockey A4]

LOL... I did not know the Queen was Scottish. :-)

[silverhawk]

To Thunderbirdsix

How can RYR be 'the safest airline in the world' when the management advise the Captain not to evacuate in the future because the warning turned out to be spurious?

[maxred]

It frankly is embarrassing. Full transcript coming up, with a sub titled video. Did I here they were coming 'aff a wing'.

Pure dead brilliant:\

[maxred]

News also coming in that a call centre operation has been inundated.

That is the 'no win no fee' legal helpline:sad:

[Jet Jockey A4]

maxred... "News also coming in that a call centre operation has been inundated.

That is the 'no win no fee' legal helpline "

Don't tell me the UK is as bad as the USA when it comes to lawsuits?

[maxred]

Yep, only if you win though.

[Dream Buster]

Exposure To Aircraft Bleed Air Contaminants Among Airline Workers: A Guide For Health Care Providers (http://www.aerotoxic.org/about-aerotoxic-syndrome/advice-and-medical-help/734-exposure-to-aircraft-bleed-air-contaminants-among-airline-workers-a-guide-for-health-care-providers)

[oversteer]

nice video of the evacuation from the BBC

BBC News - Plane evacuated at Glasgow Airport

The passenger who filmed that is an idiot. Why get so close to the slide? Just because you wanted to get your "YouTube moment", you get in the way. Nice one

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<We were careering up the runway and smoke started belting out of all the air vents with a smouldering smell. >>

Presumably a professional eye witness? I'm familiar with most take-off techniques but "careering" is new on me...

[gorter]

<<We were careering up the runway and smoke started belting out of all the air vents with a smouldering smell. >>

Presumably a professional eye witness? I'm familiar with most take-off techniques but "careering" is new on me...

It's from the same flying school that teaches you to "plummet" next to a primary school

[Carjockey]

Well nobody knows the real cause of this incident yet, but in view of previous similar incidents surely (shirley?) a first step would be a basic re-design of passenger aircraft cabin air circulation?
In other words stop using engine bleed air for this purpose.

[Heathrow Harry]

good idea but then you're going to need another compressor if you take it from outside = more weight = less $$$$$$$$

[Pub User]

I think Mr Boeing disagrees with the last poster, as that is exactly how the 787 is pressurised.

[zerotohero]

17PA

indeed as people said I was thinking de-iceing fluid, it can cause smoke in the cabin,,,, but at 9deg I guess not the case

[clipstone1]

sorry, 13 years old is only just heading to mid-life on a pax jet.....several UK airlines fly aircraft 50% older, BA have several over 20 years old in longhaul service

[Heathrow Harry]

"I think Mr Boeing disagrees with the last poster, as that is exactly how the 787 is pressurised"

after building thousands of others that use bleed air - sounds like its beginning to sink in that it may not be a brilliant idea then

[nosewheelfirst]

Due to the fuel shortage at Glasgow, airlines were tankering fuel into Glasgow. It was possible the wing was cold soaked and they may of had to de-ice.

[Lurking_SLF]

Quote of the day:

"One or two passengers, including myself, had our reading light on and when I looked up to the lamps and the ceiling, I could actually see smoke swirling around and I thought, oops, there's something not right here."


From:
www.independent.co.uk (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/passengers-tell-of-terror-at-glasgow-airport-runway-evacuation-two-hours-before-a-second-plane-is-grounded-in-dublin-as-smoke-fills-cabin-8218284.html)

[Bob Upndown]

Can anyone tell me what the beeping noises are in the video?

[silverhawk]

IRS x2 on battery power?

[Bam Thwok]

Think it's the "EVAC" alarm

[gorter]

I'm with silverhawk. I thinks irs' on batt, but I've never heard an evac alarm before so don't know.

[bracebrace!]

It's the 'Evacuation' alarm. Standard practice to activate it once the 'Evacuate' call from the flight deck has been made. Then again, it's a flight from Glasgow so it could well be the shoplifting alarm on the doors..... :ok:

[Telstar]

Pilots left it in Reverse Gear?!

:ok: Like!

It's the 'Evacuation' alarm. Standard practice to activate it once the 'Evacuate' call from the flight deck has been made.

That's given me the best laugh of the thread. It must be the button next to the ejector seats on the centre pedestals?

[Dry wretched thunder]

Belter, left it in reverse gear lol lol

[bracebrace!]

That's given me the best laugh of the thread. It must be the button next to the ejector seats on the centre pedestals?

Most aircraft have it installed on the overhead panel actually.

[Bam Thwok]

It's definitely the "Emergency Evacuation Alarm (Signal)".
It's not part of the flightdeck SOP's to activate it in an evacuation....but if it was in the "Armed" position in the flightdeck, it's possible that the cabin crew activated it on their panel.
Not too sure if it's one of their SOP's if the system is fitted.

[Telstar]

It's definitely the "Emergency Evacuation Alarm (Signal)".

Really!? Tell me more. Your knowledge fascinates me.

(what is happening to this board....):(

[jet2impress]

Also sounds like the evacuation alarm to me too.... you can also hear it in the LOT 767 gear up landing vid:

Materia

And here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTcjJoIWJQ4

[bracebrace!]

(what is happening to this board....)
Two sensible responses to a question about the 'beeping noises' in the video. Your comments are just making you look like an idiot. :ugh:

[Telstar]

Your comments are just making you look like an idiot.

You come on here making definitive statements and so does your mate Bam that it is definitely an evacuation alarm when there isn't one fitted on the 737 Those other videos are not 737s. The sound you hear is the IRS alarm as stated previously.

[Bam Thwok]

Telstar....true.....not on the 300's !! The 800's are fitted with an Emergency Evacuation Signal.
How do I know this....'cos I've flown this particular aircraft.

Besides...the IRS warning is a steady "horn"....not a high pitch "beeping".

TGIF......

A passenger jet bound for Spain made an emergency evacuation this morning on the runway at Glasgow Airport.

Four people have been taken to hospital and thirteen treated at the scene for shock.

It's thought the panic started when the pilot announced there would be no bar service on the flight.

[ls_jet2]

All Jet2 737-800's have evac alarms fitted. That's what you can hear.

Looks like a job very well done.

As usual though it appears people have taken bags with them during their exit looking at the lady coming down the slide in the video.:ugh:

[bracebrace!]

If anyone has Telstars address I'm willing to DHL him a large box of humble pie...

As jet2 said, a job well done. Perhaps we can get back to topic now.

[transilvana]

I´ve just watched the video on the Iberia evacuation, WTF is going on with the pax? all of them with hand baggage !!!! How can people be so stupid !!!

[pzu]

As a a 'piece of SLF' - I thank God that I've never had to 'evacuate' (though have experienced a couple of aborted take off's);

Re the questionable cameraman - doubtless if it had been a 'HOT' incident he may well have been considering his options!!!

But his film may be of some future use (hopefully in a training capacity)

And to me it appears at least a couple of the Punters were making themselves useful at the bottom of the slide though again if it had been a more serious incident del preservation mode may have been selected!!!

Still GOOD to see that Everyone got off more or less in one piece and that the CHAOS was 'ORGANIZED'!!!

[hungryhorse]

Good skills to the crew. Any doubt, no doubt. Quotes of 'absolute panic' - at least he lives to tell the tale.

[McBruce]

Alarm sounds like the left IRS on battery discharge. Comes on when you loose AC power, i.e. during an evac you will be on DC battery power so a battery discharge condition exists.

[Facelookbovvered]

Unfortunately for Jet2 its not as simple as move on, this will probably be subject to an AAIB investigation and report because of the nature of the problem and of course the injury to pax in the evacuation.

Three are three likely sources of smoke 1) from the engine/A/c packs 2) from de icing fluid 3) the galley ovens (grease from the deep fried Mars bars)

In any event both Jet2 & the AAIB will want to get to the bottom of it and that will involve the AAIB trawling through Jet2 maintenance records for this aircraft

Whilst RTO are not uncommon full blow aircraft evacuations on the runway are and i'm struggling to remember the last one by a UK registered airline?

[u0062]

Virgin Atlantic full scale evac a few months ago at lgw

[tubby linton]

The last full blown evacuation in the UK was the VS A330 back in the spring.

[edi_local]

I do wonder how much of the "total panic" is caused by people not listening to the safety demo and not having a clue what to do, or getting in the way of those who did listen and are trying to get out. One report suggests the crew had to shout at people to leave their cases onboard...is that really where peoples priorities lie when evacuating an aircraft? :} :mad:

[2Planks]

And given this was a Friday morning Alicante what % of the pax had already had a few before embarking on the stag/hen night express??!!

[fonejacker]

The noise is the EVAC alarm, it's in most airlines standard operating procedures to turn it off during the evacuation, so that other commands can be heard. I don't work for Jet2, so can't say whether their SOPs are different.

[EGPFlyer]

The stereotypical references in this thread are cringeworthy:ugh:

[2Planks]

Rest assured my comment would have applied if the ac had been leaving STN LBA BHX or anywhere else. ALC was my local airport for 5 years - the standing joke at work for anyone on a Fri AM flight was "How many Elvis's?"

[Eff Oh]

Agreed EGPFlyer.......... Cringeworthy! :ugh: := :ugh:

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Really, why do we bother?

This whole quote, in particular the bold bit, just highlights how ignorant and stupid passengers can be. Take a bow Jean and Gordon you are utterly deficient. Cretins.

From the Scotsman
Jean Walker said: “It was terrifying. We were about to take off and the plane started shuddering and there were lights flashing and smoke. The crew started shouting ‘get out, get out’.

“We were sitting at the wing, and the girl opened the door and we went out on the wing but there wasn’t a chute there.

“There were about eight or ten of us on the wing and I was saying people couldn’t come out because there was no chute.

“Two girls jumped off the wing on to the ground, they were OK.

“Other people got hurt coming down the chutes, they were inflated but the hostesses were just shouting ‘jump, jump’ and people were just banging into each other at the bottom and about four people were taken to hospital.”

Her husband Gordon added: “The stewardesses were panicking and shouting at people to go one way, then the other.

[axefurabz]

Don't suppose anybody noticed the name of Jet2's MD: Ian Doubtfire.

[merlinxx]

I'm glad I don't have to suck up to trash pax that now infest our air carriers:ugh:

[Alex757]

"we went out on the wing but there wasn’t a chute there"

It's unbelievable how stupid people are.

[LEGAL TENDER]

so many classist comments to denigrate the average passenger on a low cost holiday flight.. Would you like them to apologise for being a paying customer and keeping you/us in a job (I say us even being in ATC, all part of the same system)

[cwatters]

"we went out on the wing but there wasn’t a chute there"

It's unbelievable how stupid people are.

Are you saying they are stupid for using the wing exit or for expecting some way down to the ground from there?

I've listened to many safety briefings but can't recall any that said not to use the wing exit (look for your nearest) or explaining how to get down?

Only five days ago people broke legs jumping off the wing..

Several injured after fire on board jet : Views and News from Norway (http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/10/14/dozens-injured-after-fire-on-jet/)

[Lord Spandex Masher]

“There were about eight or ten of us on the wing and I was saying people couldn’t come out because there was no chute.

Are you saying she's clever for trying to keep people in a smoke filled cabin?

There is a way down to the ground and if they'd bothered to even look at the safety card they would have seen this. If the were sitting in the emergency exit row they would have been briefed by the cabin crew.

I would rather have a broken leg than take a breath of something that could kill me.

[anengineer]

One report suggests the crew had to shout at people to leave their cases onboard...is that really where peoples priorities lie when evacuating an aircraft?

Look at the Iberia vid Jet2impress posted, you can see pax opening the bins to get their stuff before evacuating.

That said, it's all very well the 'avios' on here snorting derision at the 'stupid' pax. Rolling eyes and pointing fingers at how daft passengers are isn't going to increase safety is it. Accepting that people behave as they do (and probably always will), especially in groups, even moreso in panic, and working in systems to minimise the threats caused by that behaviour is what is needed.

If they'd all burned to death because of half of them trying to get their duty-frees, would this place be filled more with comments about to avert a repeat or comments about how moronic they all were, with references to Darwin awards etc ?

[wiggy]

"we went out on the wing but there wasn’t a chute there"

It's unbelievable how stupid people are.

Well that's solved that problem :sad:.

As a regular traveller on a shorthaul type "down the back" I know the standard safety contains a lot of talk about slides and removing high heeled shoes :E but the brief for the overwing exits "stops" at the point you've got out of the exit.....

Now being crew, albeit on another type, I know what to expect when out on the wing...obvious isn't it? That in mind I've just done a straw poll of my family, who also occasionally travel on the same type, and guess what? I've had various answers, at least one of which was "there must be a slide" :uhoh:.......

So as well as kicking myself for not making sure my family have been adequately briefed in that past I also have to ask: Is it just possible some safety briefs need a rethink and a rewrite?

[davidjpowell]

I'm going to wander in as an observer - before wandering out.

Every time there is one of these evacuations there are comments about dumb passengers not listening to the briefing, and taking stuff that they should not.

If these really are issues perhaps the industry should change the way that it works, as the safety briefing clearly is not working in its current form.

As it is everyone got out, with few injuries, so perhaps its not such a problem.

[Tinribs]

We crew have allowed an attitude to develop over many years that it is not cool to read the safety instructions, where no chute would be shown for the wing exits, and talking during the demo is ok

Can you recall anyone seated near you looking about for the nearest exit

When did you ever see a pax feel under a seat for the life jacket when told there is one present of pull a lap strap tight

Passengers feel that we must look after them and they have no part to play in safety, it is perhaps an offspring of the teachers should teach us we have no duty to learn mentality.

It is not just the young. Some years ago a moderately middle aged and rather stuck up male pax carelessly opened an overhead locker causing a case to fall on my head. When I asked him to be more careful and perhaps listen to the cabin crew warning about this danger he said stop making a silly fuss it was an accident, obvously he had no involvement

[Windsprite]

Would you believe it? They are speaking English in the evacuation video!!

[Piltdown Man]

anengineer is totally correct. The "System" and by that I mean regulators, operators and manufacturers, has to spend more time considering events surrounding evacuations. It is clear that as flight crew we have very little time to acquire sufficient information to justify an evacuation yet with a possible fire, we may feel we have to react without out it. Until we are given more guidance we will have more (just like in the sim.) Smoke-Stop-Evacuate situations. I think we should spend more to see if what we do now is really a sensible way of doing things.

Then we must seriously look at passenger briefings and passenger behavior - under stress. I believe most airline passenger briefings are a complete waste of everybody's time and effort. Nobody listens for a start and secondly, the briefings lack presence and honesty. Maybe we should consider "bite sized" briefings just before the event? Do passengers really need a seat belt briefing? Is the oxygen mask briefing correct? And so on...

Then we have to consider passenger actions when it all goes wrong. What is clear is that when it does wrong, the average cabin is split into about three camps. Those who are going to live, those who'll probably die and those in the middle. Like for example, the passengers in the hijacked Ethiopian 767 who inflated their life jackets before the aircraft ditched. Here, if we are to believe a lady who found herself on the wing of the Glasgow 737, she considered that there was no way down because there was no slide. But what did the safety card show show, the one which she was asked to read before departure? Also, she went to say that two girls jumped down without injury. But she's on an aircraft wing after having be told to evacuate - just what do have to do to make this lady jump? Unless planning takes into account (or totally ignores) the "lady on the SPT onimbus," we'll not have a worthy evacuation system. I say worthy because we have to have a system that is built for the majority of passengers - because if we build a system robust enough to protect the dumbest and least able we won't be able to go flying. And this is where we must be honest. And finally, we must be totally clear that not every person will be able to evacuate an aircraft a certain amount of time, which may have consequences!

In passing, we should also consider that we will have what might be described as "useful" people in the cabin as well. The guys who were helping fellow passengers to clear the bottom of the slides in Glasgow were doing remarkable job. Considering a total lack of briefing (which takes to the above) and preparation and the fact that they believe they were close to a burning aircraft, they did an excellent job.

Which leads us on to our last line of defence - Cabin Crew. It sounds like this crew did a good job. They shouted at the passengers to get out and carried on doing so until they did. It looks like all the doors were opened and all the slides we deployed. They should be congratulated.

Finally lawyers - what do we have to do before this corrosive scum damage our lives more than they are already doing?

[MATELO]

Just for those with cutting remarks on here, this is the reality.

INCENDIO FIRE BOEING 737 CHINA AIRLINES NAHA OKINAWA JAPAN 1 - YouTube

[fisbangwollop]

Looks like they are getting loads of practice at Glasgow....A Thomas Cook flight had to evacuate the week before.....

60 passengers evacuated via emergency chutes after Thomas Cook plane fills with smoke - AOL Travel UK (http://travel.aol.co.uk/2012/10/12/Thomas-Cook-passengers-evacuated-emergency-chutes-plane-fills-smoke/)

[Centaurus]

"We were accelerating very, very hard down the runway at this stage and I was about to scream out to the cabin crew when obviously the pilot realised there was something wrong and he immediately throttled the engines back and put the brakes on. It's the hardest braking I've ever experienced in my life.
"There was a stunned silence when we stopped, everyone was in shock. The captain called the cabin crew into the cockpit and a few minutes later yelled 'evacuate, evacuate'.

It was only afterwards that people began to shake and realise exactly what had happened."

Mr Divers said the crew were "brilliant" and the captain should be praised for running up and down the cabin to ensure everyone was off the plane before him.
Natalie Crawford, from Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, said it was a "scary experience", adding: "Just as the plane was about to lift off, there was a strong smell of smoke and the cabin instantly filled up.

What made it worse was the lights were out because it was an early morning flight. Myself and my family were going for a long weekend to Benidorm for my dad's 50th. Although we're all ok it has been a scary experience."
The incident happened at around 7.40am and the runway was closed until 10am, causing serious disruption to flights to and from the airport.

flights were cancelled, including two inbound flights from London City and Gatwick airports, 14 departures were delayed and six arrivals were diverted to Edinburgh, Manchester, Prestwick and Aberdeen airports.

police spokesman said passengers on the Boeing 737-800 had been evacuated as a precaution.

A statement from Jet2 said: "This morning's flight LS177 from Glasgow Airport to Alicante made an emergency stop on the runway just prior to take-off. The aircraft was forced to curtail take off due to smoke in the cabin."
A passenger plane has made a safe emergency landing at Dublin Airport after crew detected smoke in the cockpit.

This idiotic theory of dimming the cabin lights for take off and landing in order to permit night visual adaption is nothing but a dangerous myth perpetuated over decades. It ignores the fact that night adaption is ruined with overhead reading lights on in the passenger cabin.

Even the flight deck crew have no night adaption since the landing lights and airport lights put paid to that. With the cabin lights on dim, and seat backs erect, if is often difficult for passengers to see over the heads of passengers in front of them to spot how many rows to the nearest exit and the overhead emergency lights are too dim,especially those wearing glasses..

It would make far more sense to have the cabin lights set in the bright setting for take off and landing so that passengers can see better in the cabin if an emergency evolves at night.

Plus a useful little hint for female passengers to avoid friction burns when going down a slide. Stick the emergency instruction card located in your seat pocket, underneath your apparel particularly if it is synthetic material. It prevents friction burns.

[El Grifo]

Fire guys a bit slow off the blocks there matelot :sad:

[airbus31]

i think the pilots did a. great job. its in the hands of the aaib.

[Dannyboy39]

Regarding this old aircraft argument...

It is nonsense. Age is irrelevant. Its how the airline maintains the aircraft. And the vast majority of parts will have been changed since its original fit.

A bit like Trigger's broom - 20 new handles and brushes!

Heck, cargo airlines still use ancient B727s! Just looking on Airfleets for an example. Fedex have an MSN 162 A310-200. And they operate absolutely fine. Even Delta Connection use 38 year old B737-200!

There was some comment about the age of Monarch aircraft previously. As I said on the thread, Monarch has some of the best facilities in Europe and maintains to world class standards.

[towerview]

The difference between a 737 and an A 320 is probably not clear to most passengers, and so the fact that the Boeing has no wing slides will be a surprise.

[maxred]

Fire guys a bit slow off the blocks there matelot


Well I am not a fire chief, but the reaction to that Chinese 737 fire looked a total shambles.

One and half units arriving at 4 minutes 30. Also did the 'half' run out of retardant mid stream?:ouch:

[Piltdown Man]

It's also worth examining what lighting is the most effective for enabling effective evacuations during darkness. Part of this consideration will be the lighting level just prior to initiating an evacuation. It's standard with most airlines to turn the engines and APU off prior to evacuation, thus removing power to the busses that power normal cabin lighting. This in turn normally turns on the emergency lighting systems. And while we are here, does an evacuation alarm work? What is its precise function?

Just a little extra to matelo's post - with a bloody great fire at Okinawa, a "First World" airport, it took at least 4 mins 40 seconds for the first fire fighting measures to be taken. At Glasgow, the boys (& girls?) with the blue lights observed the evacuation.

[Alex757]

"Are you saying they are stupid for using the wing exit or for expecting some way down to the ground from there? "

Anyone who has read the safety card knows full well there are no chutes on the wings.

[Shytehawk]

Then again, it's a flight from Glasgow so it could well be the shoplifting alarm on the doors.....

As a Glaswegian I really laughed out loud at that. I thought that it was only armed into and out of Liverpool.

[Tinribs]

It may be conforting for some to decide that anyone taking an action he/she doesn't understand must be stupid but it could be he/she doesn't understand

Dimming to preserve night vision is far from ridiculous. Night vision repair takes a finite time and the brighter the previously light the longer night adaption takes

Best results are if the cabin lights prior to the event are of the same brilliance as the inner outer emergency lights

[wozzo]

Anyone who has read the safety card knows full well there are no chutes on the wings.
Two points:

- Nobody reads those cards or listens to the instruction. And even if they do, they won't take it too seriously (apart from the people with fear of flying). Maybe people are stupid, or maybe they are mollified by the exceptional safety record of the industry. The chance or rather danger that I need this information is very small.

- Standing on a wing is a very unusual situation to be in for an average passenger. While sliding down at the doors seems to be natural (the usual way out and a mode of transportation we all know from childhood), a high wing with the big turbines underneath is evil territory. Expecting from people in this tense situation at this place to understand to use the flaps for getting down is in my view ludicrous. Bad design.

[Burnie5204]

That china response was poor.

As previously mentioned 4.40+ for first tender, all retardent applied to nose and starboard, none to port meaning that whilst the stbd fire is extinguished its still raging on the portside at 8.30+


Whatever happened to ICAO 2min response times...

[cwatters]

Even if you know there are no slides from the wing I bet many are surprised how high up they are. Pretty sure it would take quite a lot of smoke to persuade some people to jump.

[Rollingthunder]

Burnie5204

90 seconds

[A and C]

What I can't understand from looking at the photos is how all those people were ruining around a live airfield without HI-Vis jackets and yet nobody in this very hazardous area was badly injured or killed.

[B737900er]

If the passengers actually listened and read the safety card and accepted the 'one on one brief' the cabin crew do to the passengers on the over wing exist then its there own fault.

If you jump off the wing from the wing root it's not high at all, you can touch the flap on the walk around. All you have to do is FOLLOW the arrows on the wing which designate you where to walk, sit your fat/or drunk ass down and slide down the flap.

As usual it's a case of 'it won't happen to me'! The crew involved did exactly what the book said.

Well done to those involved.

[A and C]

Jean Walker ther lady who posted that there were no chutes from the wing is clearly a very stupid person, she has been told in the safety brief how to get out, it is also on the safety card in the seat pocket that she has been asked to read.

If she ( and others) are unable to take responsabiltity for their own safety then if they are injured or killed it is their own fault.

Today's society is full of people who are unable or unwilling to take personal responsabiltity for their actions, perhaps the death of a few of them would remind the rest that the safety brief is for their benefit ......not just a cabin crew dance!

[Alex757]

My point exactly!

If I was to be in an incident, I wouldn't be worried about my ability to get out, its the other people in my way who haven't a clue!

It's about time airlines got tough ... if you aint listening to the demo, off the plane you get!

[Sir George Cayley]

Alex, despite your tender years you've just made a valid point.

One aspect of the 1985 Manchester Air Disaster which saw 53 pax and 2 crew die in a smoke filled cabin was the difficulty of evacuation due to lack of space and the bodies of pax in the way.

This diagram speaks volumes and shows why having an evacuation plan in mind puts you ahead in the survival stakes

File:Britair28m.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britair28m.png)

Would it be right to think that any smoke in cabin incident could potentially develop quickly into far worse a situation?

[SLFandProud]

...that after years of reading this forum something has finally irritated me enough to register ;-). Afternoon all...


When fully trained pilots apparently don't know how to recover from a stall (despite that being taught in practically the first ever lesson I took in a glider,) or forget where the runway is, there is always a long debate about how nobody should place blame, all pilots are fallible, and the system/process/aircraft obviously need redesigning.

When a passenger, whose background we know nothing about, in a highly stressed situation does or says something stupid, it's taken as a sign that the passengers are morons and it's entirely their own fault because the system is completely perfect.



I expect a 15 year old kid to think they're invincible and incapable of making a bad decision, that's why we don't let them drive and why when they do start driving they have a bad habit of killing themselves. But seriously, the adults in the room should take a long hard look at themselves.


Anecdotally, in the last couple of weeks I've flown with Easyjet, Jet2 and BA several times. I always pay attention during the safety briefing, and check the safety card. Some anecdotal data points:

I cannot remember a single flight where the "personalised briefing" for those on the exit row consisted of more than "please will you put your bags in the overhead locker and remember to read the card."

Back in the old days, when you checked in at the airport, if you checked in to the exit row you were asked if you were capable and willing to handle the exit doors and assist in the evacuation. I assume they also made an assessment of whether or not you were mentally likely to be capable. Since the advent of online checkin that doesn't happen any more. Yes, I presume the gate staff/cabin crew weed out the obviously infirm/incapable, but maybe there is a weakness here. Some airlines now charge extra for the exit row - I imagine there is even more disincentive for crew to remove someone inappropriately seated there if they know they've paid for the privilege.

The idea that it is "obvious" from the safety card that there are no slides/rafts on the overwing exits (except on those planes where there are) just isn't true. I've checked several safety cards on the internet and some it's far from obvious; the reliance on pictography while understandable means actually some details like that are far from clear. It's also something I don't remember ever being called out by cabin crew. Perhaps the briefing should be updated to make a specific mention.

It may be obvious to you or me that the large arrows painted on the wing are directions to evacuating passengers, but there are plenty of things written on the wing ("NO STEP", "HOIST POINT", "STAND CLEAR OF THIS AREA WHEN ENGINES RUNNING", "ENSURE SLATS LOCKED BEFORE OPENING THIS COWL" that sort of thing (and yeah I know those wordings are probably inaccurate, I'm going from memory)) that clearly are not directions to passengers under normal circumstances, so why should it be obvious to a normal person which ones are for their benefit and which aren't?

Someone earlier (cabin crew I guess) said "when have you ever seen a passenger check if their lifejacket is under their seat." I remember being surprised last week when on one flight (BA I think it was) the CC specifically indicated to passengers they could do so if they wanted during the briefing; it's the first time I have ever heard it mentioned; prior to that you would certainly never have seen me checking - on a plane passengers are pretty much told to do what they're told and only what they're told, I for one certainly wouldn't have tried to find the life vest for fear of setting off some kind of alarm or ending up not being able to get the thing back in its holder.

Realistically, when you're on your sixth flight in as many days on a different airline and aircraft every time and you're flat out knackered, sometimes it's hard to remember where the hell you're flying from and to, let alone specific details of which aircraft you're on, even if you did read the safety card/listen to the briefing. That's just a fact of life. If there is important information people need (like "jump off the wing here, there's no slide",) present it to them when they need it, don't rely on them remembering something that could have been hours earlier.


If we can forgive pilots for not knowing how to recover from a stall, I think we should probably forgive passengers for not knowing how to get off the wing of a plane, and maybe look at how safety briefings/aircraft/the system could be modified to improve things in the future.

[Daverb]

Jean Walker said:
“There were about eight or ten of us on the wing and I was saying people couldn’t come out because there was no chute..

Yeah thanks Jean you blithering idiot. I will stay in the aircraft and die of smoke inhalation because you have decided there is no way down to the ground.

[wiggy]

Top post..:D

[Alex757]

"I expect a 15 year old kid to think they're invincible and incapable of making a bad decision"

I'm going to assume this is directed at me:

I am in no way saying I am invincible. In an incident, I know I am in a great deal of danger, exactly the same level of danger as everyone onboard. What I am saying is it worries me to think most of the people on board haven't even bothered to familiarize themselves with how to get out of that plane, and that those individuals could hinder a swift exit for everybody else.

[VHS]

Hi Alex757,

I don't think that the post was aimed at you at all ;)

Just for the record, every time I go flying I count the seats to the over-wing exit and also the rows to the forward or aft exit. I always share this information with everybody in my party. I always read the safety card and listen to the briefing.

I have done a fair bit of flying but like to make sure that should anything ever happen I have a plan to hand.

Just saying!

[cwatters]

Seems it's not unusual for people to be confused about how to get down from the wing, in at least one case people went to the wing tip. I'm pretty sure many people over 65 would be reluctant to jump even 3 foot and I wouldn't be surprised if the curvature of the flaps put people off because they "can't see the edge". Pretty sure if given a choice most peoples natural instinct is to sit on the edge of the drop with feet over it rather than slide off into the "unknown" if you get what I mean.

Jet Emergency Evacuation: 2 Pilots, 8 Crew Suspended | news.outlookindia.com (http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=691789)

Jet Airways flight 9W2302 in August 2010...

Jency, a passenger, told reporters in Chennai that everyone had panicked when the incident occurred. "You know, we were all asked to jump from the wing side. Just because people jumped from the wing side, and it is too high, many were injured. There were many old people".

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Bull%206-2010.pdf

Boeing 747 at Pheonix in 2009 and F28 in 2002..

Passengers who evacuated via the left overwing exit were unaware of how to get from the wing down to the ground. Two Safety recommendations are made as a result of this investigation.

The AAIB investigated an incident on 1 April 2002
(EW/C2002/4/1), in which the cabin of a Fokker F28 filled with smoke. An emergency evacuation was carried out, during which passengers using the overwing exits experienced similar problems getting from the wing to the ground. The report stated:

‘Having climbed out of the cabin, passengers disembarking from the left overwing exit were unsure of how to descend from the wing to the ground. A number congregated on the wing looking for a way down. Cabin crew eventually noticed the confusion and urged the passengers to get off the wing. Some passengers slid or jumped from the wing tip and leading edge (a drop of some 7 to 8 feet) instead of sliding off the wing trailing edge down the extended flaps.’

Safety Recommendation 2002-42
The CAA and the JAA should review the design, contrast and conspicuity of wing surface markings associated with emergency exits on Public Transport aircraft, with the aim of ensuring that the route to be taken from wing to ground is marked unambiguously.

The Civil Aviation Authority accepted the recommendation, but no response was received from the Joint Aviation Authority.

[maxred]

Sadly, that will be because they didn't follow their SOP then.

Probably, but what he posted was 100% accurate. I have never seen any cabin crew, ever, give a personalised briefing.

Therefore, perhaps time for ALL airlines to review their SOP.

[ATNotts]

On the other hand I cannot recall a flight in recent years where, if I have been seated in an exit row I haven't been given a briefing (carriers Air Berlin, Swiss and SATA Internacional).

What I can recall is Alex757 as has intimated, just how many passengers believe the general safety briefing / video is NOT DIRECTED AT THEM and that their newspaper or the inflight mag. is of infinitely more importance than the briefing which might save their lives, and more importantly the lives of others!

On a separate point, what also bothers me is the shear quantity of baggage that is brought into the cabin these days, which, in the event of an emergency must be a severe hindrance to a smooth evacuation.

[BOAC]

I have never seen any cabin crew, ever, give a personalised briefing. - I understand some airlines have persuaded their regulator that the safety card is sufficient.

[clunk1001]

Have flown Easyjet a few times in the past 6 months and was very surprised to have a very personal and detailed briefing on use of the emergency exit. Not seen that much attention paid to it before. It was very thorough.

[oscarisapc]

I have never been explicitly told in a Safety Briefing about how to get off the wing after being advised there are overwing exits so Jean, though unthinking about everyone behind her, was simply a victim of a poor briefing in the first place. It may be obvious to this forum that you can jump off the trailing edge but not to the average holiday maker who is encouraged to think of a plane like a bus. Passengers are told in detail about how to put on lifejackets in the unlikely event of a landing in the water (apart from the Hudson River, survivable water landings seem to be a very rare event) whereas they are not instructed in evacuation procedures when emergency evacuations on the ground due to fire, or potential fire, are relatively more common. This focus on water landings even on internal flights is a relic of piston propeller days, and is outdated. The problem is that it is internationally standardised so don't hold your breath for it to change soon although individual carriers could take a lead in adapting it. Is it not about time that safety briefings were updated and include the words "Do not stop to collect your possessions or take luggage with you from the over head locker as as this can impede your exit and that of all the people behind you who also have to evacuate the aircraft safely"? Those passengers sitting nearest the overwing exits who have to open the doors must also be told that they have to jump or slide off the rear edge of the wing and then help others to do so. If our Jean had been asked whether she was able and willing not just to open the doors but also to jump off the wing, she would have been aware of the issue and had the opportunity not to sit in the Exit seat.

[gcal]

I cannot recall having been on a flight when the emergency exit row briefing was NOT given.
The airlines I use regulary Vueling, BA and Easyjet all do it. On EZ I hold a priority card so often sit in the exit row and it (the briefing) has never been missed. Ok, so not always as pointed as it could be, but never missed. I always reinforce that I have understood it (anyone not responding is liable to find the footprint of a size UK 12 in the small of their back).
Of course some crew members are more adamant about it, that's natural, but it is always given.
On Vueling in particular a cabin crew walks down the aisle to check seat belts/hand luggage on floor etc; and another crew member walks behind to double check. It has always been done as far as I know in a conscientions manner.
On a recent BA flight BCN/LHR a cabin crew member whose name was Jane (well done Jane) told a pax who was talking during the briefing to be quiet. It was done with a polite air of authority.
I am prepared as an ex flying person to take responsibility for myself (checking exit rows, door operations etc; as indeed I do in hotels. It is ingrained in me) but know that many people are not. They may be the same people who can see no harm in following another vehicle too closely or walking under scaffolding - such is humanity. and surely flying is now so safe!
The only question I have is why on BA the window blinds are allowed to be down at landing and take off, as many U.S. airlines allow. No other airline that I regularly fly allows this - seems to me like walking into a blind alley. Oh, yes why still the silly tapes on life jackets?
My point is that most crews do their level best and rarely, in my lengthy experience, miss that much.

[zukini]

I agree with oscarisapc not only on this but the part about the masks dropping down. I think the briefing should mention if it happens the aircraft will normally decend to prevent further panic in a stressful situation. More information is good in all these situations. When smoke occurs in the cockpit/cabin there isnt going to be a chance to repeat the briefing in a rapidly changing situation.

[Mr A Tis]

SLFandProud

Probably the best post I have ever read on PPRuNe.

.........Oh & on the subject of life jackets, don't look under your Ryanair seat, as they are in the overhead panel. Listen to the briefing !!! yea & on how many flights has the PA been so inaudible as to be a waste of time? Certainly 3 of my last 6 flights were inaudible (ZB, EZY & RYR).

[A and C]

I have the misfortune to have to travel Easyjet about 6-8 times a month and try to get an emergency exit row seat, each time I have the cabin crew have taken the time to give the people at the exit a brief on use of the exit.

I could make a lot of criticism of Easyjet but the emergency procedures are always followed and others above seem to agree wth me.

If the smoke in the jet2 aircraft had been a fire that stupid woman directing other passengers back into the aircraft would have most likely resulted in multiple deaths...........and all because she ignores the safety brief and can't be bothered to read the safety card.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Not only that but did she really think that it would be safer inside having read the safety card or not?!

[Shytehawk]

Mr A Tis

Except for 1A, 1B, 1C and 2E, 2F, 2G where they ARE under the seats.

[RMC]

Belated response to post 60. You are correct all fire / smoke evacs require an AAIB investigation. The last runway evac I remember was mid 2010... ryr returned with wheel well fire light that did not go out.

[Shytehawk]

Lord Spandex Masher

It beggars belief. She had just left an aircraft cabin that was contaminated with smoke and there she was believing that she knew better than the crew and was directing the pax back inside what could have become an inferno. She was also impeding the exit of those inside wanting to get out. She obviously also thought that remaining standing above a tank full of fuel with a possible fire was a good idea. It is a pity that we have advanced so far, in our old hunter gatherer days such people would have been removed from the gene pool at an early age.

[Piltdown Man]

I think Jean may have actually saved lives. No disrespect intended, but I'm convinced she is fairly normal passenger, if such a beast exists. Us clever ones in the know fully realise how "stupid" she is but the reality is, she and her friends pay our wages. So we as system have, unintentionally, let her down. She thought there should be a slide so that she could get off the wing, but there wasn't. But what else was she unclear about? Unless we ask, we'll never know but I think we should ask the "Jeans" what we have to do so that they are better equipped in an emergency. However, we have to be honest about this process. If research shows that a briefing makes no difference, then we should stop doing them but maybe, just maybe, we should do some things a little differently in the future - to help the Jeans of this world.

[A and C]

You make a good point but you have an uphill task in trying to educate those who don't want and can't be bothered to take a few seconds to learn how to leave an aircraft in an emergency.

[Vunstick]

I flew twice with Jet2 recently, sitting in the overwing exit row. Cabin crew did no personalised exit row briefing on either sector, and on one occasion failed to check for/clear obstructing baggage prior to landing.
Didn't see one other passenger read the safety card. The cabin crew struggled to get some passengers to stop chatting during the briefing (to their credit they tried)
In my experience bmi baby crew routinely did the overwing briefing, and would pause the safety PA if passengers were obviously not paying attention.
The quality of the PA system in some of the classic 737s leaves a lot to be desired, which doesn't help.

[OntimeexceptACARS]

To all of you who have dissed passengers on this flight, to all of you who have called real people stupid, or any other similar term, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Passengers should have respect for the crews, but crews should have respect for their passengers too, as someone posted earlier. That way everyone stays in a job and good businesses will grow.

Think again : what would YOUR mother or father do, if they are over 60?


Incidentally, as self confessed SLF who worked airside for a number of years, I don't know either if an A319/20/21 has a slide from the wing emergency exits. I knew the B737 series didn't. And I usually pay attention to briefings, having read extensively about aviation safety.

When people are out of their comfort zone, panicked, stressed, they do things that are often not rational. Are you the same people who called the AF447 crew stupid? Were they stupid?

Kudos to the crew, for everyone got off. Manchester taught (hopefully) all crews that it could have been a different outcome, very quickly. The attitude of some folks on here is appalling. Though as a Glaswegian, the humour made me laugh too :)

[16024]

Seven pages in, and this is what it boils down to.

A) It is really quite important to listen to the safety briefing.

Or:

B) You don't really have to bother.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

OnTime, I would also expect passengers to have respect for themselves and other passengers. I would suggest that they do this by knowing what to do, how to do it, where to go and how to get there.

That way they do not put other lives at risk. Including mine.

Would you be singing the same song if it had turned out that lovely old Jean had been responsible for trapping people, or sending them back, inside a burning aircraft to die?

[SLFandProud]

Poor old Jean...

If she'd only read the safety card, she'd have known there were fuel tanks in the wing! She clearly didn't think at all! Any fule knows, it's clearly there on the safety card, that in the event of emergency the crew will remember to extend the flaps, that the wing isn't a safe place to stay because it's full of fuel, that right there where it says 'NO STEP' is where you're meant to jump off, and that a jump into pitch darkness of unknown height is perfectly safe. She clearly didn't think at all!


Alternatively, she did think. And she came to the wrong answer. She probably thought something was wrong, that the slide she had expected to be there wasn't; that in this day and age "you're meant to jump and hope" probably wasn't the recommended procedure, so something must be wrong and maybe she thought she would be helping the people behind by saying "this clearly isn't right, try another way."

Of course she was wrong. But it doesn't make her an idiot, it makes her a human. If it's human for a professionally trained pilot to have a fit of the quivers because the captain got seasick, then we should probably accept the passengers are at least as susceptible to moments of imperfection.


Maybe the solution is not to blame the SLF for being thick, maybe it's to ask if there is anything we can do to help them make better decisions. And if nobody listens to the safety briefing (something I suspect is massively overstated by cabin crew desperate to convince themselves their calling is higher than just selling scratchcards) then probably best to accept the briefings don't work and come up with something better, because moaning about it isn't going to change anything more than wishing pilots could recognise a stall will.

[The Ancient Geek]

The only question I have is why on BA the window blinds are allowed to be down at landing and take off, as many U.S. airlines allow.

This is standard practice at many airports at night. A nice long line of white lights makes a good target for assorted miscreants toting an AK47 or RPG near the airport.

[Blind Squirrel]

...is perfectly correct in everything he says.

It is, frankly, chilling to see the number of responses from those claiming to be aviation professionals who consider that the appropriate response to a system that is clearly failing on human factors grounds is to call the people involved "cretins," "morons," "drunks" and other offensive (and outrageous) appellations.

Such "professionals" -- and the profoundly unprofessional attitude they represent -- are a greater menace to aviation safety than an entire aircraft-load of Mrs Walkers could ever be.

[hoofie]

Thank SLFAndProud for your posts.

I've flown a lot, have a technical background and a strong interest in Aviation. I would hope I am considerably more informed than the normal punter.

And yet to this day it has never occurred to me that the over-wing exits may not have slides off the wing on some [or all] aircraft.

If I was sitting on the wing and I heard the word 'evacuate' I would be out that nearest door with my family also - I don't think I would have time to re-acquaint myself with the exact provisioning of escape slides vis a vis exit doors.

Some of the attitudes displayed on this thread about passenger behaviour are really offensive, trolling almost. - I hope to god they are not coming from flight crew members.

p.s. Furthermore, as a expat-Glaswegian I find the comment about the shoplifting alarm going off to absolutely called for and hilarious.

[cwatters]

I've just had a look online at some 737 safety cards. One of unknown vintage for Jet2 seems clear enough about the route but a card from an unknown airline shows the flap shaded yellow, the same colour as the slides.

[Finbarr]

Now that EZY & RYR are selling extra legroom seats (which just happen to be by the emergency exits!) there is no check on the fitness of people buying such seats. I have twice recently (on RYR) sat next to [apparently] 'unfit' people who would not have been capable of operating the emergency exit - but they have paid for them so the Cabin Crew appear to be reluctant to move them.

[Al Murdoch]

Finbarr - that is definitely not the company policy.

[A and C]

I wonder what your reaction would be if your family had been stopped from getting out of an aircraft that was burning because of someone who had failed to take any notice of the safety brief and card ?

Avoiding personal responsabiltity for their actions is what you are advocating, if it was just the likes of Jean who would come to harm because they did not take in the safety brief than I would say nothing but under different circumstances her lack of attention to the safety brief could have resulted in the death of tens of people.......... I am sure that she is not the only one on that aircraft who ignored the safety information that was presented to them but she is the one who stuck her head above the media parapet and proved that she had not taken in the fact that you should slide down the flaps ( that he crew had set to 40).

It would seem that you have not taken in the way to escape from the overwing exit and have proven this by saying that you have to jump off the wing in to a dark area, you should of course slide down the flaps and the area is illuminated by the aircraft emergency lights...........I await another uninformed reply.

[Mr A Tis]

A & C

We have to assume the pilot has set flap to 40, which as events proved last week, they may not have done. ( Antalya)

The point is, if only people did what they were supposed to do.

I am not referring to this particular Jet2 incident, however it is clear that, we see pilots not setting flaps 40, cabin crew not doing personal exit briefings, allowing unfit people to sit at exits because they have paid for it, unclear safety cards, & inaudible PAs.

IMHO the whole safety brief needs a revamp, with less emphasis on the life jacket & more on the getting out. Do we need a lifejacket brief for a flight not even going over water?

[A37575]

Dimming to preserve night vision is far from ridiculous. Night vision repair takes a finite time and the brighter the previously light the longer night adaption takes

Best results are if the cabin lights prior to the event are of the same brilliance as the inner outer emergency lights

Clearly a matter of personal opinion. Both Cathay Pacific Airlines and Dragonair have a long held policy of cabin lights on bright for take off and landing at night; although of course set to dim in the cruise when passengers are sleeping.

Then of course you get the faintly ridiculous Qantas Domestic policy of dimming the cabin lights in broad daylight yet turning them to bright for engine start and once the engines are stopped on the tarmac. It was suggested dimming the lights during daytime saves fuel by using less generator load!
In fact it is mindless stupidity by whoever writes the policy manual used by the cabin staff.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Poor old Jean...

Alternatively, she did think. And she came to the wrong answer.
Of course she was wrong.

Poor old Jean indeed. If I'd been coming out of that exit to find her in front of me she'd have got a hefty shove off the wing because I'm not stopping.

If poor old Jean had taken one or two minutes out of her ever so important life to read and absorb the safety card she wouldn't have needed to think. She would have known where to go and she would have [I]known[/] there was no slide. To not know that, my dear chap, is stupid.

But she obviously didn't want that responsibility, for herself or others.

[A and C]

Running in thank you for providing the uninformed comment.

Mr a Tis you do have a point about the human factors but no matter how much the industry improves the way that safety information is communicated there is a high proportion of passengers who will choose to ignore it, perhaps this is a head in the sand reaction due to a fear of flying.

Lord Spandex I am in total agreement !

[maxred]

We have to assume the pilot has set flap to 40, which as events proved last week, they may not have done. ( Antalya)

Sitting on the ramp post event, flaps certainly looked at 40

[Mr A Tis]

Maxred I am not referring to Jet2 at Glasgow in that post, but the B738 in Antayla last week.

Yes we are talking human factors here, both for crew & SLF.

From many of the posts it's the aviation professionals that seem to be burying their heads in the sand.

[A and C]

I did not say Jean was a bad person bad and stupid are to entirely different things, there was a safety brief and a card giving the safety information in the seat pocket in front of her. Not reading and understanding is stupid and shows a lack of responsabiltity for personal safety and the safety of others, fortunately her failure to take in the safety information did not result in death or injury to anyone.

You need to get it into your head that the airline industry can only provide the safety information, the passengers have the responsabiltity to listen and understand the information that is presented to them.

Mr A Tis I am all for better communication of safety information and research into the human factors aspects of passenger safety but when I fly as a passenger I see people who can't be bothered to listen or watch the safety brief, please do tell me what more the industry can do to reach these people ?

As far as I can see the airline industry discharges its duty to give the passengers the safety information they need, it is by and large the passengers who fail in their duty to listen to the brief that is given.

[loopylee]

Re - personalised overwing exit briefings.

Im crew for a well known airline in the uk and also work on 737-800's and it is our SOP's to give an awareness briefing to everyone sat in the exit row.. and as far as im aware ALL uk airlines must do this as this is a CAA stipulation. I cannot see how crew would NOT give a briefing :S

[SLFandProud]

You keep coming up with this strawman that Jean is personally responsible because she ignored the safety briefing and didn't read the card. How do you know?

The fact is, everything addressed in the safety briefing Jean, as far as we know, got right. She was conscious, so presumably was wearing her seatbelt when the plane braked & succesfully didn't get knocked out. There's no evidence she stopped to collect her handbaggage. If she put her lifevest on, she obviously remembered not to inflate it inside the aircraft since she got out of the exit. She identified the exit closest to her (of this we can be fairly sure, since the overwing exits are nobody's 'natural' route given a choice,) and took it.

The safety briefing stops there. I have never heard a briefing that told you what to do once you are out on the wing. So on all available evidence, she understood and followed every letter of the briefing. It Was Not Adequate.


As for the card - they are a mishmash of unintelligible iconography designed to be understandable regardless of language but the reality is the opposite. Even if you know what you are looking for, it can be hard to identify details (as someone else mentions, I've seen a card where the flaps are coloured the same colour as, and look a lot like, escape slides.) If you don't know what you're looking for - and how many passengers do you think it occurs to need to check if their particular aircraft has overwing slides or not? - then it's like a Where's Wally cartoon; obvious in hindsight but not so helpful in an emergency.


The fact that most people seem to manage to handle the situations addressed in the safety briefing but then get stuck at something not mentioned in it would seem prima facie evidence not that passengers are idiots that ignore the briefing, but rather that the briefing does work but should be updated to address the real issue of people not knowing how to get off the wing of an aircraft.

If time is the issue, maybe the facile bit could be dropped that in the event of finding yourself in the middle of the atlantic with impending hypothermia an extremely small whistle and light are going to be any help.

[A and C]

Wrong on all counts ! From my posts above I have said I am interested to see any new ways that the safety information can be communicated so that it can be understood by the all the passengers but the main problem is the peope who won't listen, be you a Rocket scientist from Oxford or a fishwife from Peterhead the information won't get through if you don't put down your copy of The Times or OK.

The briefings are as simple as posable to avoid any ambiguity and to give people on a stressful situation as little to do as posable, as to the personal responsabiltity issue, that is one for society in general to adress, but anyone who gets onto an aircraft without understanding that they have a responsabiltity to themselfs to understand how to get out of the aircraft is undoubtably stupid, after all it is very difficult to phone one of the ambulance chasing lawers if you have failed to escape a burning aircraft because you failed to take notice of the safety briefing.

Any transport company has to assume that it's passengers will cooperate if an emergency situation occurs because the alternative is unworkable, the likes of Jean need to get a hold of the fact that they are responsible for taking all the help they can get to assue their personal safety because the responsabiltity rests with themselfs and no one else, this is not just an airline thing it is a whole life thing !

[10bob]

I am also only humble SLF (but who will fly over 100 sectors this year, long and short haul) but take a keen interest in aviation. Hence being registered on here.

As someone else has eloquently pointed out, when crew make mistakes we are all asked to think about "human factors" and how "all the holes in the swiss cheese line up". Clearly the same should apply here.

Most people, if you ask them to think about an emergency evacuation, will think about going down slides. That's what you see (and focus on) in the safety briefing, and that's the image you get when TV pictures show an evacuation. It is what your mind "expects" to see when you need to evacuate.

The safety cards are often not explicit in stating that there is no slide from the overwing exits (for those types where there isn't one). As far as I can recall, I have never seen an explicit reference to sliding down the trailing edge in a video, demonstration or on a safety card (and I have flown many types of metal, with many different airlines). I can only recall it being specifically mentioned once in a personal briefing when I was in the emergency exit row.

Are you seriously expecting an infrequent passenger to look at a picture on a safety card, notice that a slide *isn't* there, and then realise that they are meant to slide down the flaps instead?

Comments about being moronic or stupid don't help when the information provided is clearly not sufficient.

[Rwy in Sight]

I am not sure I follow it correctly but I fail to understand how the pax in question assumed she needed a slide to descent from the wing to the ground. Having flown only on A320 over the recent months, I expect to see a slide but I can't believe she paid so much attention on an Airbus flight safety demo card.

And one more question: Does the national CAA checks the contents of the demo card? If yes how? They just look at it or they run it through a test sample of pax to see if they convey the right message?

Rwy in Sight

[A and C]

On one hand you are saying that the industry is not giving enough information and not in the correct way and I am more than happy to take the communication issue on board but on the other hand you are telling me that people under stress will do unpredictable things.

By the very nature unpredictable is not predictable so the industry can only do its best to predict what it thinks is most likely and brief for it.
The industry has learned the lessons from incidents and made changes over he years but no emergency situation is likely to be utterly predictable unless you are a newspaper reporter or a lawyer who has had years to decide on a course of action that the crew had seconds to take.

I know the industry is not perfect but it takes all reasonable steps to ensure he safety of the passengers, all I ask is that the passengers take the reasonable course of action and pay attention to the safety information that the airline give.

[etrang]

It's certainly not stupid to say that there are no slides off the wing on the 737, in fact the statement is quite correct.

[jetset lady]

Seven pages in, and this is what it boils down to.

A) It is really quite important to listen to the safety briefing.

Or:

B) You don't really have to bother.

You forgot one.

C) Why don't we brief the over wing exit passengers on the lack of a slide from the 737 over wing exits? We cover the door operation etc but I'll be the first to admit, I've never thought to mention that there won't be a slide. And I've never heard it mentioned by anyone else either.

As crew, we fly on these aircraft day in, day out. They are old friends to us and we know all their little foibles, even down to the slightly different characteristics that can often be found between aircraft of the same type. We often forget that our passengers don't know these aircraft like we do and that what may seem obvious to us isn't always obvious to those that haven't had safety drills pounded into them year after year.

It's all very well saying, "read the safety card" but as many have pointed out, it's apparently not obvious that there are no slides from the wing on many, if not most. But even if it is, how many people scan the safety card and see what they expect to see, rather than what is actually there? After all, they're probably tired, distracted and would possibly rather not dwell for too long on what might go wrong.

I actually have to thank Jean. She has reminded me that when I came to the 737, having worked on the 757 and 767 for years, I was surprised by the lack of a slide on the overwing exits. Yet I'd positioned regularly on 73's. How had I, as crew, never noticed such a thing? Would I have realised in time, if an evacuation had been called? I can't honestly say that I would and I do read the cards. While that wouldn't have stopped me sliding off of the wing, it might have made me pause for a split second. Jean, who hasn't been through the training, would have been able to see the slides from the doors so should we really be surprised that she stood on the wing wondering where her slide was? All the arrows in the world aren't going to help if you are not seeing what you expected to see at the end of them.

A couple of extra sentences during the over wing briefing will change that. I will now be adding those sentences and will be briefing my crew to do the same. We can't help those that refuse to listen to the demo but we can at least improve the chances of the Jeans of this world. SLFandProud and Running_In have hit the nail on the head, in my opinion.

This may be a non event to some but as with many other incidents that we have learned from - FR Decompression and the bag not inflating comes to mind - one comment by one passenger has highlighted a seemingly small detail that has actually turned out to be pretty important.

[SLFandProud]

Absolutely bravo, a credit to the industry.

For my part as SLF, I will in future make a point of checking the safety card for the presence of slides at the overwing exits, and if seated in the exit row (being 6'3" something I aim to be more often than not) will verbally confirm with the cabin crew, for my benefit and also everyone else in the row/within earshot.

[angels]

What spiffing common sense from jsl. I fully confess to having flown for some years (at the back as I was a smoker) before I knew that some overwing exits didn't have slides.

That said, if an old bat was in my way on the wing I think I would shove her out of the way because I do know that the fuel tanks are in the wing. Or perhaps I wouldn't. Who knows how they will react in such a situation?

And re that fascinating clip of the evacuation of the 737 I'm so pleased that the pax at around the 30 second mark remembered to bring their shopping with them!! :ugh:

[Dg800]

The industry is at liberty to alter the way it provides information, it could check understanding after the brief. It could do an interactive quiz on the inflight screen if available. Just because you can't imagine a different way of doing it doesn't mean a different way doesn't exist.

Are you serious or are you just plain trolling? And pray tell, what do you do when half the passengers fail the quiz because they were reading their paper instead of preparing for it? Do you kick them off the plane or do you allow them to retake the test after further study review? Or do you send them off to remedial classes?
Get real, will you?

The airline industry does provide information but this information doesn't seem to be filtering down the right way does it? You sound like a school teacher blaming his pupils when they fail their exams

If the student spent all his time playing footie instead of studying then I'd say the teacher is bloody well within his rights to blame it on the student and even flunk him! :ugh: Unfortunately, you cannot flunk paying passengers.

[Dg800]

I don't want to lead us down a rabbit hole here but if someone doesn't learn what you're trying to teach them then there's a good chance it was your fault. For fear of getting lost in the analogy then why didn't you stop him playing football? Kids want to play football, they don't want to learn but it is your job to make them learn. As I've already said, you aren't doing someone a favor if your doing what you get paid to do be that getting them through an exam or getting them off a burning aircraft. You're right, you're really not trolling, you just evidently bought into the whole "It's not my fault I'm too stupid, it's yours" and "I'm a paying customer so I only have rights and no responsibilities/obligations" mentality, lock stock and barrel. To continue with the teacher analogy, it's not the teacher's job to stop the kids playing football instead of doing their homework after classes, it's the parents'. If said parents keep blaming the teacher then they really got the child they deserve (and vice versa).

BTW, are you perhaps advocating that FAs should walk down the aisle and whack passengers who are obviously not paying attention with a ruler? :ugh:

[swordfish41]

I've read this thread with interest, but one thing that puzzles me is the insistence by some posters that people in an exit row seat get a "one to one briefing". I can only remember that happening on a few occasions, and it has consisted of three questions. Are you aware you are sitting in an emergency exit row? Have you read the safety card? are you prepared to open the exit hatch in an emergency? I honestly think that this is the best it gets, when it has happened at all, at least in my experience. So do all the people telling us that its all the passengers fault think this is adequate? And should all the passengers in the exit row get the "briefing" or just the one in the window seat? As for the response that it is SOP, I would just like to ask how the procedure is monitored to ensure its efficacy? I look forward with genuine interest to the replies.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

1.) If I'm sat 5 rows from a door and I can't get out because there are people who are either in shock or don't know what to do in the way I don't care if they read the card. I want them out of the way and I expect the crew to make sure that is happening.

So Running In, you're just going to stand or sit and wait for the cabin crew to do something for you?

If you do that you become part of the problem, afterall there are people behind YOU trying to get out.

If you want to travel as a passenger on my aeroplane then you better accept the responsibility that comes with it. Or you're not travelling.

[ScotsSLF]

"BTW, are you perhaps advocating that FAs should walk down the aisle and whack passengers who are obviously not paying attention with a ruler?"

Actually saw a FA walk down the aisle and 'rattle' a businessman's newspaper as it was stuck in front of his face, with a polite "This is important sir, can I have a minute of your time?" Smiles all round from fellow passengers!

[swordfish41]

How will you stop them travelling on your plane LSM? And how can you be certain that the passengers in the emergency exit rows have been given their "one to one briefing" and have accepted their responsibility? The truth is passenger evacuation procedures are one of the holes in the Swiss cheese and sooner or later it will line up with some other ones and a lot of people will be dead. On the one hand in this thread there are posters, mainly passengers but a few CC saying in reality the evacuation procedures are flawed, and on the other there a few saying that its nothing to do with manufacturers or airlines, its the passengers who are a problem. Maybe you should find another set of passengers.

[windytoo]

There are several reasons why we see the same problems with an evacuation, time and time again. This actually appears to be quite a good one , with few injuries and the crew seeming to do a textbook stop on the runway. Most of these have almost been done to death on this thread but once again I feel that the biggest threat to safe operation is the dreaded "Bottom Line".....MONEY
From the moment PAX get on, they are bombarded with PAs to buy this or that and consequently the Safety Demo PA can be lost in the background as people just try to block out the ambient noise. The time spent on the briefing has been shortened by many operators to make sure the aircraft departure is not delayed at the holding point, and the cabin check is performed by the minimum number of crew that the company can get away with by law. THis means that an aircraft with 8 emergency doors/exits can operate with 3 Cabin Crew members.(ratio of 1CC to 50 Pax) Are we all happy with that? Also from my experience, when one starts selling emergency exit seats as an ancillary cost, the true meaning of "Able Bodied Person" seems to get lost in translation for that extra £10. If I had had to open the overwing exit last week, then the person I was sitting next to who was also in an "extra legroom seat", would have acted like a plug and not an ABP.
I certainly don't blame "Jean" per se, but safety costs money, and people appear to be willing to accept reduced margins for a cheap ticket. I guess that's the "Bottom Line".

[Heathrow Harry]

I have NEVER been offered anything for sale before the safety briefing

the problem is that its is always (almost) the same message and most of the passengers couldn't tell a 737 from a 380

the only one in the last few years that got any attention was the ANZ one with the crew all in body paint.............................

TBH when the current accident rate for western airliners and aircraft is so low passengers just don't think it is likely to happen and they are correct

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Running In, it ain't my idea. They signed up to the rules and regulations when they booked the ticket.

Do I shout at them

Yes. Unless you're just going to stand their meekly and snuff it.

[fa2fi]

This isn't a LCC issue people. BA charge for exit seats as do Virgin. I see nobody questioning whether they do checks on people before selecting seats (whether they charge or not). And if someone sat in an exit who was not suitable the cabin crew would feel more comfortable moving seone who's paid a £12 supplement on easyJet compared to a legacy carrier or MEB3 airlines.

Do you not feel there would be more pressure on cabin crew if the pax was a gold tier frequently flyer/1K/Exec Club. I'm quite certain if it happened on a certain Middle East airline then the cabin crew would be disciplined. Afterall it tends to be those with status who get to select the exit rows particularly on US airlines.

I cringe reading some replies on here. I miss the days when it was mainly pilots. Not spotters/trolls/armchair CEOs! Just because you watch Aircrash Investigation does not mean you are a safety expert nor are you qualified to ammend or write airline SOPs.

[UKpaxman]

I was on the jet2 757 from Glasgow last Tuesday, sat in row 34, the row behind the over wing exits. The cabin steward certainly gave all the passengers sat in the exit seats very clear instructions of their role in an emergency and he then made sure there was no baggage on the floor in that area - in fact he had to make it crystal clear to one woman who wanted her handbag with her. There was no sales patter until after airborne and the seat belt signs were switched off. Only problem on our flight was a 'missing' passenger and a goosed apu.

Out of interest, how far is the drop from the flaps on a 737 to the deck?

[CEJM]

JSL had a very valid point. Maybe it is worthwhile for the cabin crew to include in their safety brief that the overwing exits have no slides and that pax should slide of the flaps.

We don't know if Jean has read the Safety Instructions or not. If she hasn't then that is not so smart. If she has, and hasn't understood them then it should be investigated why people don't understand them.


1.) If I'm sat 5 rows from a door and I can't get out because there are people who are either in shock or don't know what to do in the way I don't care if they read the card. I want them out of the way and I expect the crew to make sure that is happening. That isn't the time to get into a debate about rights and responsibilities in modern society, not while my duty free is melting.

i.e the crew have a responsibility to cater for those who are a problem for the sake of everyone else.

Running In, I do get the impression that you are trolling. If you really work onboard an aircraft as you say, then you should be aware that there is no hope in hell that a member of cabin crew is going to get anywhere in the cabin apart from their evacuation position. In the Jet2 case, you got 189 people trying to evacuate an aircraft and a person will NOT be able to go against the flow of people who are trying to exit the jet.

[SLFandProud]

Out of curiosity, are you 100% sure about that?

Roe 34 sounds an awfully long way back for an overwing exit on a 757, are you sure it wasn't the configuration with no overwing exits but emergency exits just aft of the wing (naturally slide equipped I presume...)?


Not saying you're wrong, but curious. Of course, if it is the no-overwing-exit configuration, it does just go to show rather that even self-determinedly 'bright' passengers who know what they're doing can be led astray by their own preconceptions - rather than the precise details of what's actually on the safety card ;-).

[A and C]

Going off the flaps is roughly the same as going down a slide in a children's playground, a drop of about twelve feet with a 40 degree incline.

You would arrive in the ground quite fast but a lot better than the alternative.

[fa2fi]

It's as enough going against against the flow during boarding/disembarking never mind during an evacuation.

[jetset lady]

On the one hand in this thread there are posters, mainly passengers but a few CC saying in reality the evacuation procedures are flawed, and on the other there a few saying that its nothing to do with manufacturers or airlines, its the passengers who are a problem. Maybe you should find another set of passengers.

I wouldn't say the system is flawed, as such. That only happens those that make the rules stop listening to people like Jean and dismiss them out of hand as "stupid". It would be great if every single possible scenario or problem had been thought of prior to anything happening but the aircraft and the weather generally haven't read our SOP's. Nor have the passengers. And neither are exactly known for doing exactly what we expect them to do at all times.

With the demo, we have a very short time to get as much information across as we can and this is not, as suggested, to prevent delays on reaching the threshold! It's because the longer you babble on and on, the more people you lose as their attention starts to wander. That's why crew have to be trained to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and the SOP makers have to be willing to change or tweak procedures when someone ends up standing on the wing looking for a non existent slide.

Unfortunately, short of forcing people to watch 12 hours of Aircrash Investigation prior to every flight, no amount of safety procedures will remove the biggest danger to any successful evacuation. Complacency will always win.

[CEJM]

I've said my piece, it all makes sense. I'm not trolling.

The problem is that it doesn't make sense at all. You expect something from the crew which is physically impossible.

So I take it that may you ever find yourself in the situation described in my earlier post, that you quite happily sit there and watch your Toblerone (or god forbid worse) melt?

[A and C]

It was my understanding that you had said your piece, it would have been better to have maintained that stance.

[jetset lady]

The cabin crew are responsible for ensuring the flow of people off the aircraft.

No. We are responsible for giving people the information they need to help get themselves off the aircraft.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

It's when they decide to turn around and stop the evacuation they get labelled as stupid...because surely that is what it is.

[Thunderbirdsix]

To be honest I never knew there were wing slides.

A320 aircraft Wing Slide Deployment - YouTube

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Here ya go Mr In.

Main Entry: irrational  [ih-rash-uh-nl]
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: illogical, senseless
Synonyms: aberrant, absurd, brainless, cockamamie, crazy, delirious, demented, disconnected, disjointed, distraught, fallacious, flaky*, foolish, freaky, incoherent, injudicious, insane, invalid, kooky, loony, mad, mindless, nonsensical, nutty, off-the-wall, preposterous, raving, reasonless, ridiculous, silly, sophistic, specious, stupid, unreasonable, unreasoning, unsound, unstable, unthinking, unwise, wacky*, wild, wrong

So you agree.

[rog747]

i assume all the A320 family have o/w exit slides incl 318's?

i did always knew 320's had them.


737's NG have upward hinging escape hatches as you know, where as
classic 737's and the 320 family have a 50lb? hatch to chuck out the opening
(we used to put it on the seat...but not now, or do we?)

the height to slide down off the back of the lowered flaps on a 737 isn't as much as 12' feet surely as someone posted...?

the 757-200 in some versions not with UK airlines though (AA have them operating here to UK)
and all 757-300's (Thomas Cook have them) have overwing exits same as 737 classics. you chuck out the hatch here, er no you put it ON the seat.
But do these 757 variants have slides from the o/w as they are much higher than the 737?
THEY MUST HAVE SURELY?
(do not confuse with door 3l/r which has a drop-down door and slide.)

so you expect Jean to know all this too? lol

i sit often at exit doors and never do the CC fully brief me or brief me at all.
often i say i am ex crew/airline staff so they smile and giggle and later on drinks are freeflowing should i wish (i don't)

i always ask if i should be unfamiliar with the door mechanism to be shown that and often gasps of breath from all those around me that i dare mention the thought that in 10 minutes time we maybe rapidly trying to expedite squeezing our fat bums out of the small aperture to escape it being warmly singed...

it's like cancer oooh don't mention the C word except the C here is crash or chaos and we are all too often afraid or embarrassed to discuss....

i think some posts here have been excellent and hello again mrs jetset

[maxred]

Running in. Page 10, and you finally cracked.

Lest we forget, it is an Internet forum. Nothing more, nothing less.

Suggest a cup of tea in a darkened room, and chant the mantra


Nothing matters, nothing actually matters at all.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

syn·o·nym *(sn-nm)
n.
A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.

Well here's a definition for you and a suggestion that you heed your own words.

A and C, please don't start acting like a child, if you want to add to the discussion please do but comments like that are pointless and just serve to drag us in to a personal slagging match.

[swordfish41]

Jet Set Lady.
I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, but you did say that you would change your instructions to your cabin crew because reading this thread made you realise that there was no slide over the wing on a Boeing 737. And yet you presumabaly have thousand of hours service. And you presumably have given those "one to one briefings" hundreds (at least times ) to those passengers sitting in emergency exit row seats, although I notice that none of the vociferous posters here have been able to answer my questions about them, i.e. what is the prescribed script, what responses do you look for, does it include all the pasengers in the exit rows and so on. In all my traveling years I can remember just one instance of a passenger being asked to move because in the judgement of the CC he was too infirm to handle the task of removing the window, and that was on a TWA flight in the states. Shows how long ago that was.
Your last post says that you are not responsible for getting the passengers out of the aircraft in the event of an emergency. Did you really mean that? Go back to the incident of the BA 744 at Phoenix a few years ago, where there were the same complaints of poor communication, panic, and immobile CC. Go back and look at the thread. So should some of the other posters here. We were assured that BA would be investigating. I'm not sure what the results were. But what I and others here are arguing is that the industry and people who work in it have got their heads in the sand, because its a problem that they do not want to face . And one day it will kill people.

[swordfish41]

If there are any trolls in this thread its Aand C and Lord Spandex Masher.
This is a serious issue and you guys have just tried to run it into the ground.

[wiggy]

swordfish

"Go back to the incident of the BA 744 at Phoenix e CC. Go back and look at the thread. So should some of the other posters here. We were assured that BA would be investigating. I'm not sure what the results were."

It wasn't just a BA investigation, FWIW here's the AAIB report:


http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/1320.pdf

[swordfish41]

Thanks for that link. But I think its instructive to go back to the thread here on pprune, because you will see much of the same attitudes then as are expressed here, except what is interesting is that passengers who decided to intervene and take charge of their own destiny were slagged off as cretins, even though their grasp of the seriousness of the situation was better than the CC's.
sf

[Lord Spandex Masher]

even though their grasp of the seriousness of the situation was better than the CC's.

How do you come to that conclusion? The cabin crew were evacuating the passengers, before themselves, from a potentially deadly situation. Some of the passengers were trying to stop the evacuation from happening.

If their grasp of the situation was better than the cabin crew then what on earth were the trying to accomplish. Manslaughter?

[A and C]

Clearly you have not said your piece so why say so ?

Clearly you have decided that no matter what the airline is totally responsible for tha actions of all the passengers and that absolves the passengers from all responsabiltity.

My stance is that the passengers should be provided with the means and information to get them off the aircraft should an emergency situation arise, as four cabin crew can't be expected to personally escort 180 passengers to the exit individually it stands to reason that the passengers have to at least listen to the safety briefing to ensure their personal safety.

You seem to have nothing constructive to say and all you do say is just negative, dispite a number of people from within the industry making constructive comments, so other people on this forum can see why I think that you are just another troll.

If you want me and others to amend. their opinions you need to become reasonable, constructive and practical.

[jetset lady]

Swordfish41,

I may not have been very clear. What I meant was that before working on the 737, I had never noticed that there was no slide from the over wing exit rather than that I didn't actually realise that until reading this thread. As I said, it is easy to forget that while we know the characteristics of the particular types we operate on inside out, it is sometimes easy to forget that for many passengers the aircraft is an alien environment. What may seem obvious to us after years of familiarity, isn't to them.

With regards the evacuation, I said that we are responsible for giving them the information they need to help get themselves out of the aircraft. That doesn't mean that we just open the door and lead the way down the slide, tempting though that may be. It means that in certain circumstances, if they are getting into trouble towards the centre of the aircraft for example, while we are evacuating other passengers at the doors, we might not even be able to get to them in time to help them. If a serious fire is involved that's more or less a certainty, although it won't be for want of trying I can assure you. Then there's the possibility that we may be injured or worse ourselves. Therefore, we have to ensure that during the briefing, we give as much information as we can to give people the best chance in a worst case scenario but without giving them so much that they end up zoning out before the end. Does that make more sense?

Finally, I can't speak for other airlines but our over wing briefing consists of door operation, instructions on the seat back, safety card, suitability check and willingness of passenger to operate exit if necessary. I do and have moved unsuitable passengers. If it's explained properly, most are happy to move. Those that refuse are given the option of another seat or the airbridge.

[flox]

There were 3 smoke/fire incidents on B737 in a matter of days. Corendon, Turkey with evac, Jet 2 with evac and Transavia with diversion to Zagreb. Transavia hasn't even been mentioned here and Corendon tread almost died out.
It all come down to if Jane, or whatever is the name, is stupid.
I would suggest to everyone who want to post here to read last post by captplaystation on Corendon tread.

[16024]

Did your colleague make his mistake (we've all made mistakes) because he didn't bother to read the manuals or the SOP, or because he was reading the newspaper when the mission was being explained?
Did he then go to the media and say how chaotic and frightening it was?
Did he abdicate responsibility for his own safety and the safety of others?
Did he go straight to Money Grabbers 4 U to see how much he could screw out of the system?
Everyone makes mistakes. Some learn from them, and so safety proceedures evolve. Hey, maybe even passenger briefings.
Some seem determined never to learn.....

[SLFandProud]

Well this thread has certainly gone down a blind alley. Time to disembark I think.


As mere SLF though, I will say this:
I am far more terrified at the prospect of "A and C" or "Lord Spandex Masher", who have thus far shown themselves utterly incapable of introspection or any interest in process improvement, being involved in any way in any safety critical industry - let alone carriage of souls - than I am of meeting Jean during an evacuation.

You're a disgrace to your profession.


Absolutely all credit though to a few though, not least "jetset lady."

[swordfish41]

Jet Set Lady,
as I said I don't want to put words into your mouth, and If you think I've misrepresented what you said then I apologise. All I can say about the one to one briefing is that in my experience its honoured more in the breach. Clearly in your experience it isn't. I certainly understand the problems you have in trying to impart all the safety information in the time that you have, within the limits of excited or apprehensive passengers attention span. I also appreciate that if there was a serious fire you would have your hands full. You certainly seem to realise that. In fact this is why I and I think some others on this thread are saying that we get alarmed when some posters just want to say the system for evacuating passengers is fine/the best we can do, the problem is the plebs we have to carry. They're stupid, or drunk, or uneducated. ( I don't include you in this.)
The truth is almost every incident of an emergency evacuation throws up some problems, which in a more serious set of circumstances would be fatal. And it would be fatal both for the cretins and those who read the safety card in equal measure. So we should stop being complacent.

[Boeingchap]

There is a rope in the door frame of the 737 (over wing) and a yellow painted tie down on the wing surface - this is to aid evacuation from overwing exits .?

What's that all about ? Given the cabin crew are at the front and rear of the aircraft , ever seen one used ? It's such a secret , Pax would never know its there !!
IF the passengers found it and attached it to the wing - it would lead you to the middle of the wing - yep straight in the direction you don't want to be going .....

[A and C]

I think that you misrepresent me and have only skimmed my posts, in at least three of them I urge the quest for better communication to be used when the safety brief is given.
The major problem however is the passengers who are determined to ignore the brief, the reason for this is unclear to me but a quick look around the cabin of any flight and you will see this behaviour.

I am pragmatic about safety and can't see any way forward with cabin safety if a large proportion of the passengers are immune from taking in any safety information no matter how well the industry presents it.

In the airline I work for the captain's last task in an evacuation is to take a PBE and a Flashlight and to search the cabin for incapacitated passengers and leave the aircraft by the rear door, as you might have guessed that will have a detrimental effect on my life expectancy. I will no doubt be risking my life for those who have become incapacitated because they did not take the trouble to read the escape instructions.

If this us being a disgrace to the profession then so be it but at least I am not viewing the situation through the eyes of the politically correct who totally reject the personal responsibility that a passenger holds for their own safety and the safety of others.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

SLF, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion.

However, I am not involved in developing or improving processes. That isn't my job. I am though involved in the "carriage of souls" (although I prefer to call them people) in a very safety critical environment, I have been for nearly two decades and I haven't lost one yet. As such I am very aware of the need for my passengers to follow those safety critical instructions.

I would ask you quite how you know I am incapable of introspection because of one view point I am expressing on this forum?

[Mr A Tis]

Well I think if regulators were serious about safety then ;

1. It would be investigated why there is almost an evac once a week for ground cockpit/cabin smoke issues ( poor procedures / tight turnaround times ? )

2. All window exits, all types would be equipped with slides.

3. A cabin crew seat would be in the exit rows.

4. Exit rows would be occupied (2 recent flights I travelled on, 2 different carriers had empty exit rows as nobody would pay for them.)

5. Excess cabin baggage wouldn't be stuffed in the hold at last minute without a thought for the contents.

6. Cabin PAs would be made audible.

Anyone who portrays passengers en masse as " stupid" does not deserve to be in the pointy end. Especially so, when some of these very people check their mobiles on finals, take off from taxyways, can't recognise a stall, land at the wrong airport, fail to lower flaps in an evac & more....

We are all human, we all make mistakes, sometimes stupid. Stop bitching about each side of the fence & work together to improve, educate & learn, no matter what our position is.

[Road_Hog]

Going off the flaps is roughly the same as going down a slide in a children's playground, a drop of about twelve feet with a 40 degree incline.

You would arrive in the ground quite fast but a lot better than the alternative.

Surely the 'drop' isn't 12'? If so, then that distance at speed, isn't acceptable for people to fall onto tarmac.

[Dairyground]

In many years experience as SLF, I recall only two occasions when I have been seated in a window exit row on a short-haul flight. On both occasions I was fully briefed by a cabin crew member, and on one of them I was asked to move into the otherwise empty exit row. So some crew of some carriers do do the job properly.

As regards briefings, how about turning off all lights, including reading lights, except for spotlights on the persons giving the demonstration.

As regards evacuation process improvements, why not identify the row numbers of the exit rows? They are well-defined, but never, im my experience, announced. To go with this, attach large, legible row numbers to the aisle seats at headrest of armrest level. To avoid people trying to take bulky luggage with them, enforce the rules on size, and also reduce the maximum size.

[A and C]

The drop is about 12 feet from the top surface of the wing to the ground, you go down the flaps at about a 40 degree incline and the bottom of the flap is about 4 feet above the ground. It is not a 12 foot vertical drop to the ground !

I hope that clarifies the situation

[cwatters]

Seems even some crew may have an issue with going down the flaps? Anything special about a Nimrod?...

Key Publishing Ltd Aviation Forums - View Single Post - Victor XL231 And Nimrod XV250 Work Diary (http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1733480&postcount=663)

we practised our emergency evacuation drills for the demonstration the following day. Baldrick brilliantly demonstrated using the rope from the front door to climb down. Nimwit sort of demonstrated the "fat lad on a rope" style. Brave man - I wouldn't do it though! Then we tried the over the wing, down the flaps route. Again, Baldrick and Nimwit excelled, Nimchick faltered and got stuck. Fail. I will do it one day (hopefully when no one is watching).

[A and C]

Over react to an unusual situation? OR take a fire into the air ?

Which option is better ?

Oh and in the time taken to read this post you have to make that call !

I have no doubt that if Shy Talk is correct in what he as written the cabin crew took the correct action, even if investigation finds that there was no fire/overheat on the aircraft.

[A4]

Perhaps someone can confirm whether Jet2 do "packs-off" take offs on their 738's. If they do, then that would put paid to the water vapour theory (unless they run the packs/APU for takeoff).

Water vapour tends to evaporate almost instantly as it enters the cabin - it doesn't "fill" the cabin! Additionally the conditions hardly seem conducive to water vapour (GLA at 7am in Oct is not the same as a muggy IBZ at 32C in summer!)

It must that've been something pretty spectacular for the CC to make the call - but if in doubt....... no doubt.

[fa2fi]

Running In - you say it's the cabin crews responsibility to get pax off. Now that's all well and good however what if the cabin crew are unconscious? Should the passengers just sit and wait for the emergency services to arrive? Overweight exits are "self help". Passengers need to open and operate these exits themselves. Cabin crew are not stationed by these exits. So therefore passengers must take responsibility for their own safety too. Time and conditions permitting (I'm sure you could understand nobody would run into a wall of flames) cabin crew will check for pax left behind which is the point if the smoke filled cabin training.

Any more updates on the source of the smoke?

[A and C]

As you say it will come out in the wash, however I am always very reluctant to criticize people who have to make life or death decisions in a split seconds.

I am just an Internet observer of the situation and am not in a position to comment on what the cabin crew did or did not see but I would far rather see ten evacuations on the ground if that prevents one aircraft getting airborne with a real fire.

[A and C]

I agree about the cool heads being needed.

The problem is that at what moment does keeping a cool head become ignoring a real problem ?

Because fire on an aircraft is such a serious problem I think the industry has to except that there are going to be few false alarms. Even taking just the money into account (without the human costs) if you avoid the destruction of one aircraft because of fifty false alarms you would still be in Proffit.

Some on this forum might see this as some empty headed bimo panicking, I take the view that it was a Cabin Crew member who had to take a split second decision and that decision was the safe option.

I am told that if Fire is suspected it is Jet2 SOP to the evacuate the aircraft immediately, perhaps ( and I mean perhaps) if the SOP gave the captain an option of some thinking time after the stop then the aircraft would not have been evacuated.

In my opinion all the crew did an excellent job within the scope of the company SOP's

[gcal]

As for exit rows staying empty because nobody has paid to sit there - yes I have seen that on Vueling.
On EZ unless I am mistaken crew will move pax to the row if those seats are not taken.
This thread seems to be a bit worked to death but I say again that I have never had a briefing missed when sitting in that row.
Or, the last row on those carriers that have it as an exit; Ryanair does I believe.

[2Planks]

IIRC CAP 748 (happy to be corrected by a CC professional if it has been eurofied) mandated that UK aircraft had to have a person sat in the seat closest to the emergency exit. Used it to my benefit once locos started to charge for the extra leg room - after door closed just move and have a quiet word.

[Burnie5204]

Though of note (as this was originally a Jet2.com thread) Jet2.com charge the same for pre-booking an exit seat as for a standard seat (£6.99) "due to the slide bustle partially intruding on your extra legroom" compared to £16.99 to pre-book an extra-legroom seat in either the extra-legroom rows or exit rows

[wetwing]

No one listens any more we have this flying thing covered.We have been flying now for a hundred years what can go wrong we are so good at it.Most of the travelling public think aeroplanes are magical machines how do they work and fly no idea, they feel safe in there pretty painted hoilday jet. Going flying is serious for every one on board you are now part of a team so you must listen and read and under stand or stay at home.

[A4]

Nudge..... So do Jet2 do "packs-off" take offs or not?

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Yes, it's an approved procedure when bleeds off required with a u/s APU, although not often used.

[A4]

So, SOP is packs on fed via APU bleed? So possible APU problem? Over filled with oil.....?

If this was the case it would certainly present itself as more than water vapour.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Well standard is engine bleeds and packs on. If bleeds off required for perf then yes engine bleeds off APU bleed for the packs if the APU is serviceable.

[Thrush]

Just a thought....

Why don't the CAA EASA or whoever insist that we adopt the same rule as in the US when I worked there.....? If you identified yourself at check in as Police, Fire, Ambulance, Military or Aircrew you would be given the exit row seat to assist in an emergency.

Ah, I forgot, we don't really check in anymore.....! It on the interweb.

The lot I work for now have the CC assess the ABPs when they take their seats for suitability, both physically and, very importantly, MENTALLY. This appears to work and we don't have old grannies or dopey kids in baseball caps acting as ABPs. :ugh:

[A4]

So, no problem with perf ex GLA to ALC so assume packs running on Engine bleed? Allegedly nothing wrong with A/C. Hmmm.......Odd. True smoke could only come from xs oil, mechanical failure in the pack or de-icing fluid (aircraft or runway). It should be easy to discount some/all of these..... and so perhaps it was water vapour. Whatever - no one died and lessons will be learned.

[A and C]

Are you a fan of the asmatic aircraft from Toulouse that always seems to take off with the bleeds off ?

The 737NG almost always takes off with the bleeds on, you might go bleeds off at Corfu in the middile of the summer with a full load, but this is unusual.

GLA-ACL at MTOW would a de-rated takeoff year round in the 737-800.

My guess is that the reason for this is that the 73NG wing is half a generation ahead of the A320 in terms of refinement.

[A4]

I fly the Airbus (and I suppose I am a fan) and our SOP is packs off for all take-offs which is nothing to do with asthmatic performance but $. It's to save money because there's less demand on the engine hence slightly lower hot end section and therefore extended life / reduced maintenance cycle. When the aircraft are performing perhaps 8 take-offs per day on with a 200+ fleet small savings soon mount up.

Putting packs on after thrust reduction is a complete non-event, just leave 10 seconds between the two to prevent any surge. If you forget you get an ECAM caution displayed telling you in plain English that you have "PACK 1 OFF" "PACK 2 OFF". (You don't get the take-off CONFIG warning at 10,000+ feet when á la Helios.......)

Perhaps you misunderstood my post. I said that GLA-ALC would not present any performance problem. I was merely trying to establish if Jet2 did bleeds on or off - not which aircraft has the better wing..... (In reality, I bet there's a fag paper between them).

I think the crew did a good job by all accounts. The final report will be interesting.

[A and C]

I'm also A320 rated, as you say the packs off take off is a non issue but the weight lifting ability of the 73NG makes hot, high or short runways much less of an issue than with the A320. No doubt Airbus will leapfrog Boeing in terms of performance when the new A320 hits the market.

[simountain1]

I must admit as SLF and a nervous flyer I have never felt overly safe on the old Jet2 737s creaks here there and everywhere, once we flew back from Barcelona there was ice building on the inside from the over wing emergency exit and the draft was horrible had my coat on, and my partner had her scarf on all the way home as it was that drafty
We flew to Dubrovnik with them 2 weeks ago on one of their 738s wow what a difference!!!
I would have no hesitation flying with Jet2 in future on this type of aircraft as it the experience was so much better than what we have had previously especially on LSAD 757 with no air vents above each seat and seats which were well and truly ready for replacement.
Jet2 need to update their fleet. I am just an aviation enthusiast so know what I am flying on but as a small single isle aircraft the 738 is my favorite

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Holidaymakers evacuated from planes hit out | Herald Scotland (http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/holidaymakers-evacuated-from-planes-hit-out.19495106)

Jim Morris, a former RAF Boeing pilot and partner at Irwin Mitchell, said: "The air accident investigation should determine what caused the smoke incidents, with the aim of improving flight safety.

"Our clients will be seeking compensation from the entity responsible, which may result in litigation in the courts. We are determined to help them get the justice they deserve."

1 - That's what they do nobby.

2 - Justice? You don't think surviving is enough?

To summarise - Nasty thing happens. crew perform their duties. Crew, airline or manufacturer get stood up in court.

Only going to be one winner.

:ugh:

Next time leave 'em all on board.

[DADDY-OH!]

'Former RAF Boeing pilot'? Is this an ex-AWACS TACNAV's 'Bee-atch'?

[No RYR for me]

"Our clients will be seeking compensation from the entity responsible, which may result in litigation in the courts. We are determined to help them get the justice they deserve."

You know what: next time stay on board, call your lawyer first while the rest of the passengers are happy to evacuate for their safety! :rolleyes:

Rant over

[Dairyground]

"Our clients will be seeking compensation from the entity responsible, which may result in litigation in the courts. We are determined to help them get the justice they deserve."


It is, of course, always possible that the courts will determine that no compensation is due.

[solitary man]

Lawyers have now been instructed by the passengers, who said they were injured in the incidents last month at Glasgow Airport involving Boeing aircraft, and have called on the manufacturer and aviation authorities to explain the cause and seek assurances such incidents happen again.


Last line folks, a subliminal message from the lawyers

"seek assurances such incidents happen again"

[scotbill]

Reminds me of the old Glasgow joke.

"My ma was in that bus accident yesterday."

"Was she hurt?"

"Naw - but she had the presence of mind to lie down on the pavement with the ones that were."

(Translated from the Glaswegian)

[Artie Fufkin]

The retired nurse added: "I was pushed down the chute, no- one was there to catch me, then they started to come down on top of me. My leg's still sore."


... She's got to be kidding. This is a wind up, isn't it?

[Airbanda]

Trouble is, it will be cheaper to give the claimant a few £k than to fight this nonsense and see it all off once and for all.

Nobody is looking at the bigger, industry wide, picture that says resist all the way to the Supreme Court and get some senior court authority on the subject.

Each individual claim is under £10k including all the costs. It's cheaper to settle than punt half a million on having chosen the wrong 'test case'.

[maxred]

Honest guv, it was only meant as a joke..........

My original post #25:ugh:

I am however, not the least bit surprised.

What do they expect when they sell the tickets for 25 quid

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Each individual claim is under £10k including all the costs. It's cheaper to settle than punt half a million on having chosen the wrong 'test case'.

Not if you set a precedent like that!

[Heathrow Harry]

yeah but you may not have another similar incident for 15 years - it's the other airlines who will suffer but of course they won't pay your costs to take this one to court

[Airbanda]

Not if you set a precedent like that!

It won't get to be a precedent because it will never get to court. The trick played by the lawyers in these cases is to push things to the brink of proceedings and then pull back and agree a settlement figure.

IM were known, in their formative stages up north, as the Yorkshire rotweillers