Emergency Egress
 

After you've wrestled your wounded bird onto the ground and hopefully brought it to rest without killing yourself and a tree or two, you've then got to get your passengers, crew and yourself out. So who's tested it? Have you a strategy for escaping a bent 152? What about aircraft with one door? How about gull wing doors on an upturned aircraft? Do you carry an 'escape axe' and would you know where to start cutting your way out? What if your passenger were unconcious - especially in a PA28? Does your airfield allow you to conduct a practice escape drill on their taxiway/apron/ramp and how long did it take you? I wonder what our combined experiences will reveal.

Once did an underwater helicopter escape course. Designed for oil-rig workers so mainly aimed at passengers. It was good fun and suprisingly easy... in a swimming pool with divers checking you're ok. For good measure they also stuck us in another helicopter mockup and filled it with smoke before practicing evacuation.

The real trick they taught us was to sit with one hand holding onto something near your seatbelt release and the other stretched away from you, holding a bit of the aircraft, but pointing in the direction of the nearest exit. That way, when they dropped you in the drink then rolled you upside down you didn't get disorientated and you still knew which way to go to get out.

In some ways not very representative of reality doing it in such controlled conditions. It certainly convinced me that ditching was a pretty ropey idea. They had some impressive stats on survival rates for people who'd done the course, though!

I did RAF escape and ditching training in the late '50's and early 60's and got to test it about a year ago in Chespeake Bay.
Funnily enough I didn't forget too much. All good stuff that at the time was regarded as an unnecessary evil. To that hairy old Flight Sergeant that beat it into us, THANKYOU.

The course at the local marine Survival Centre was excellent. Again related to helicopter/rig ops.

The worst bit for me was once you got into the large raft and closed it up. They had a wave generator in the tank. I reckon the instructors had a sweep on the time to first vomit. 'Cos once one starts.... http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/tongue.gif

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