Emergency floor lighting

[LilyMars]

Hello there safety experts,

I have started writing a wee article on the Manchester airport disaster in 1985, and it's turning into something way more epic, argh. I've written the narrative of the event itself and am now writing up about the investigation and aftermath.

I have found several claims in short articles about Flight 28M that emergency lighting on the floor pointing to the exits was mandated after this disaster. However, I cannot substantiate this. I can see in the AAIB report that several recommendations were made, none of them related to lighting. In fact the report at one point says they don't think it would have been that useful due to a film over the survivors' eyes impairing their vision. The report is way more into smokehoods.

A thread on here from 2004 says this was introduced after Kegworth - but I can't see anything in the recommendations in the Kegworth report, either.

I can see in the report on the 1983 Air Canada DC-9 fire, that was published in January 1986, that floor lighting was something they announced they were going to recommend as a result. It's not clear when this recommendation was actually made, though and googling is proving difficult.

I'm sure Mayday/ACI has made the claim that the disaster resulted in the lighting on their shows about both Manchester and Air Canada... but that might not be correct.

I'm going cross-eyed trawling through reports, so forgive me if this seems like the easy way out, but I've already been at for hours, and it's only going to be one brief paragraph... I was wondering if anyone knows for definite when the emergency floor lighting was made mandatory? Or could point me to somewhere that would be more likely to have bang on information?

I would also appreciate any opinions on how useful it has proven to be, especially given the concern in the Manchester report that people wouldn't have seen it anyway... in more recent evacuations like Air France and BA in Las Vegas t'other day, was the lighting a factor, do you reckon?

Given that in both of those a lot of the passengers made it out with their baggage (I shall say nothing about my opinion of that :oh:) I'm assuming visibility was not so much of an issue?

When I get home I shall check my actual books to see if they mention anything further, but any help you can give me would be very gratefully accepted!

[Submarine Yellow]

You might find this source useful. The citation is Science "Airplane Fire Safety Debate Rekindled", by Marjorie Sun, Vol. 221, No. 4605 (Jul. 1, 1983), pp. 35-36.

A long article on the subject includes, for example, this statement"

"The FAA has also not yet required aircraft manufacturers to place exit lights near the floor. In 1972, the safety board urged such a regulation based on the obvious fact that smoke rises and obscures the exit lights near the ceiling."

and others (copyright precludes pasting it all here). While not directly answering your question, it does provide some interesting background on the length of time the debate had been going on before the requirement was finally mandated.

[LilyMars]

This is amazing, thank you so much for your help. I think this may also give birth to a future general piece about safety recommendations and how they are followed up and enacted. I can't believe I forgot about the "Lessons Learned" site - I wish I had remembered that before I got sucked into reading the reports. :-)

Things like Mayday/ACI and lightweight articles definitely give the impression that after a disaster, "aviation" is all like "oh my gosh, look at this terrible disaster, we must immediately sort our crap out" and lo and behold, changes are made and flying is much safer, and that that particular cause doesn't happen again because of course, "lessons have been learned".

I had even thought this would be a good topic for an ebook for nervous flyers, so I started looking into incidents that would make good chapters and was a bit perturbed to discover that actually such a book probably wasn't such a good idea! But then I probably shouldn't have started my research by looking into cargo doors... :ooh:

But then then I recently found myself reassuring a nervous flyer after the Las Vegas fire with platitudes about learning lessons and how the improvements between the Manchester disaster and the later Air France, Air China and this BA evacuation showed how much things had improved, which made me thoughtful and was what triggered revisiting my idea as I thought that the fires in the early 80s were actually good examples of "lessons learned"....

In the course of my research I have also found about a PWA Flight 501 in 1984, a runway fire on a 737 caused by fuel tank rupture, which I hadn't heard of before.

So although I am not now convinced I will be showing my piece to any nervous flyers, I am hoping it will be an interesting description of a disaster and the causes and effects of it instead, aimed at "interested non-professionals"...

[LilyMars]

That's also incredibly useful, as you say, it's not been extensively reported. Thank you again!

If people are interested in reading my final thing (I'm not sure what to call it at this point as I'm not sure what length it's going to be, hehe) I'll post the link once I'm done?

[LilyMars]

I think this is very true of my industry as well. We make checklists and procedures but to staff who weren't around when the "lessons were learned" they are often meaningless. Finding ways to make sure people truly take on board what they are taught and the logical connections between the checklist and what's happening in front of them... ai, if I could work out how to make sure that happens, I'd be minted.

It is in fact one of the reasons why I'm leaving my career in safety/quality management next month and instead just going to have an easier job, enabling me the energy and time to indulge my other interests such as writing epic articles about disasters largely for my own pleasure! I'm getting frustrated with dealing with complaints and investigations into incidents where staff didn't follow procedures properly because they had no insight into why those processes were in place, even though they had apparently been trained properly. One of my first actions in my current job two years ago was dealing with a death caused by staff ignoring procedures, and I am frequently having to remind even staff who were here at the time about it!

It's even more heartbreaking though when staff do stuff more or less properly, as Terrington and Love did in Manchester, and still have a disaster... knowing that at some point in the future the pain they, the victims and survivors went through will become a meaningless training anec***e is immensely frustrating. I kindof see why automation is seen as a solution to that, in that it removes human nature from the equation, especially when not every pilot, even in the "old days", would have been capable of legendary saves - there's always going to be incidents where the staff are the ones who only just passed their exams, innit...

EDIT: Um, why has the board automatically censored the "d o t" in "a n e c d o t e"? ***!

[LilyMars]

You might find this source useful. The citation is Science "Airplane Fire Safety Debate Rekindled", by Marjorie Sun, Vol. 221, No. 4605 (Jul. 1, 1983), pp. 35-36.

A long article on the subject includes, for example, this statement"

"The FAA has also not yet required aircraft manufacturers to place exit lights near the floor. In 1972, the safety board urged such a regulation based on the obvious fact that smoke rises and obscures the exit lights near the ceiling."

and others (copyright precludes pasting it all here). While not directly answering your question, it does provide some interesting background on the length of time the debate had been going on before the requirement was finally mandated.

It does indeed, and I'm sure I could find many parallels with other safety issues in aviation and many industries. Who'd be a safety/quality professional, eh? :ugh:

[john_tullamarine]

why has the board automatically censored

There are various things which are prescribed for automatic whiteout .. I have no what happened here, though. Will see if I can find out .. for my own interest.

[Submarine Yellow]

It's usually because the software thinks you are trying to enter an email address by replacing the full stop by the letters "d o t"

[LilyMars]

A-hah, not a built in dislike of the Department of Transport then. :-)

[LilyMars]

Ai ya, I'm on nearly 6000 words already. I should stick to bad poetry. :-)

It has been much harder to do the disaster any justice without going into much further depth than I was initially planning to!

[LilyMars]

Still on it, 9000+ words so far and currently finding out about water-spray systems.

:sad:

Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to aviation when it comes to regulations and whatnot. I wasn't stupid enough to think that being an expert in my own industry's regulations and an avid consumer of disaster porn would make this easy, but it's definitely way harder than I was expecting. And I was expecting it to be very difficult!

[LilyMars]

I have finally finished and formatted my thing on the disaster!

This has evolved from what was intended to be a bit of rather short, intended-to-reassure-nervous-flyers puffery into being a rather long thing which I felt compelled to finish. I'm not sure who my target audience is for it. Maybe informed enthusiasts or beginning professionals?

Might even end up being the first chapter in an e-book along the lines of "Auntie Lily's Favourite Disasters"... it has certainly made me vow to never grumble about the regulations in health and social care again! :rolleyes:

Here it is, kindly hosted by a chum:

http://www.dollyrotten.com/LilyMars/28m.pdf

[john_tullamarine]

Will see if I can find out .. for my own interest.

Didn't find out the specific detail as to why but I am assured that the problem has been fixed.