Arming/Disarming SOPs
 

need some help fellow crew members:)

am putting together a presentation on the reasons behind inadvertant slide deployments and possible stategies that will mitigate against this...do any of you have a procedure where door are only opened from the outside and not by crew at all...???? In my company we have had 7 cases of blown slides by crew this year:ooh::ooh:!!!

Any information much appreciated:cool:

Most airlines in the US have gate agents open the doors... PM me and I can send you excerpts from Flight Attendant Manuals.

I'm not a great believer in gate agents opening doors. IMO, the crew should have maximum exposure to opening and closing themeselves.
BA have a good practice whereby the doors are disarmed whilst the a/c is pulling onto stand and still moving.

You should probably also consider the design of the aircraft door.

B767 doors are somewhat notorious for accidental slide deployments. Least is the B737 style door because there is no emergency power-assist.

Excellent Presentation:

http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/2001Confe...ingerSLIDE.pdf

Good Article:

http://flightsafety.org/asw/july07/a...y07_p22-25.pdf

I think the fact is, Cabin Crew should be able to open and close doors. It gives us maximum usage which can get us used to the doors (OK so it might be slightly different in an emergency with power assist and harder to open due to slide being armed but still.

I have heard the 2 most notorious aircraft for inadvertant slide deloyments is the Airbus (shorthaul 318/319/320/321) and 767. Because either the arming lever moves in the same way as the opening/closing lever (A320) or the arming lever is right above the door handle (767)

One way that our airline (a certain UK airline - not sure if other airlines do this aswell) prevents this risk is to have a strange procedure when arming and disarming 767 doors - 2 crew members do it - 1 of you puts your hand over the red control handle whilst the other arms/disarms. This is designed I think to prevent crew members ''accidently'' opening the door instead of arming/disarming. (This is if there are 2 crew members per pair of doors available) It does make it slightly awkward and is abit of a song and dance, and the lever is quite stiff as it is, but I suppose if it is to prevent inadvertant slide deployments then so be it!

I think to prevent it, the best way is rather than making ground staff open it is to let crew members open the doors, but just stress the importance to crew of check check checking!!! Things like double checking before opening and checking all indications (like the Emergency Only placards/or no placard visable/yellow flags/no yellow flags) etc etc whilst cross checking and also before opening is the best way to help prevent inadvertant slide deployments.

My airline lets us cabin crew open the doors, and I think it is the case of most UK airlines.

I've worked for a number of airlines, and two examples spring to mind -

The first Cabin Crew cracked the doors open on the aircraft types that could (Boeings...) while the ground staff did the rest, or ground staff did everything for Airbuses. Cabin crew the completely closed the doors.

The second airline (Airbus only) had ground crew operating the doors as part of SOP's.

The incidence of blown slides at the 1st airline = up to half a dozen a year;
The incidence of blown slides at the 2nd airline = ZERO.

Absolutely great to have crew handling door's as much as possible, but it my opinion, it just aligns another hole in the cheese, by giving crew the opportunity to become complacent with doors. At the 2nd airline, crew touched doors in an emergency only, as as that is the only training we did, its all crew would think of to do. In an emergency, it may well indeed see a few more lives saved - at an airline where crew routinely disarm doors then open them, "auto-pilot" mode has indeed seen this too happen inadvertently during an emergency...

At Qantas, all door opening is conducted by ground staff.

The main reason for this is the A380, 747, 767, A330 all disarm automatically when opened from the outside (so as long as things are working well, it wouldnt matter if the door was indadvertantly left in the armed mode - as it would disarm as soon as the ground staff open it)

The only exception is the 737 with manual arming, the cabin crew crack the doors on arrival, but the ground staff still operate the doors after they are cracked.

I asked the question at eps some months ago, there hasnt been a cabin crew related accidental slide deployment in years. But apprarently one caused by an engineer.

Three simple (but essential, nevertheless) words are missing from the OP:

PLEASE and THANK YOU