Hwel, I hardly think that's an excuse for everybody to do their own thing, do you?

RBF, I have to concur with other posts here. If you take it upon your own head to do anything without orders from the captain, he is perfectly entitled to have anyone on board lay you out and, if necessary, use what is left of your body as a ramp for others to climb over.

Do your own thing based on no information at all and you are DANGEROUS. You will endanger not only your life (which the remainder on board will have few problems with) but also the lives of everyone else.

You have no idea at all why an evacuation might not have been ordered, even assuming there is a danger. You do your own thing and all you will achieve is unnecessary deaths through your own selfishness. :rolleyes:

Hwel
 

No so Hwel, the cabin crew DID try to open the doors, (the CVR confirms this), the reason they would not open is because the aircraft was NOT depressurised, by the time it was everyone was already dead.

The reason it was not depressurised is another matter.

Most definitely I'm interested in getting off alive. And if the evacuation starts 30 seconds earlier, that can save a whole bunch of lives.

So who should be responsible for initiating the evacuation?

The pilots can see next to nothing. It can take a few minutes for the fire fighters to show up. The tower can be over a mile away.

The people best situated are the cabin crew by the rear doors.

If I see the cabin crew people on the job and taking initiative, that's one thing. They don't necessarily have to open the doors if they're looking out the cabin windows and keeping the SLF in the loop.

If they're standing around dazed and waiting for orders, time and perhaps lives are trickling away.

The pax who intiated the evacuation at YYC were definitely interested in preserving their own skin -- and saved a lot of lives.

Until I open the window and stick my head out, which will take me all of 5 seconds. Not to mention the engine fire warnings and temperature gauges which you can't see.

It's a terrible world we live in where ATC can't even afford a pair of binoculars.

Why? On an A319/320 and presumably anything longer the cabin crew won't be able to see the engines through the tiny windows in the rear doors.

Well you probably won't unless you have a mid-fuselage crew station because any proficient cabin crew member will be in their seats, by their door awaiting an evacuation command. They wouldn't be mincing around in the cabin (for once!) keeping 'the SLF in the loop'.

well I stand corected Blue eagle,
Tho having had a chat to the fire chief on my last fire and Smoke course, the amount of smoke/ uncombusted vapour reqired to kill/incapacitate or at least give you serious long term health issues is really very small. There are still a lot of toxic materials that go into making aeroplanes (and cars for that matter) less exposure to them the better. So even tougher choice, 3 broken legs now amongst 200 pax or an extra 20 cases of cancer in the next 10 years. :ouch:

Chuks the senario you were given sounds similar to the British Airtours B737-200 at MAN-CFU. A lot was learnt from that incident and a fair few changes were made to equipment on board such as smoke hoods, floor lighting, and pilots would not say which exit to evacute from, extra room at o/wing exits and CODPIE was introducted.

From a cabin crews point of view we would tell you that the engine was on fire and if fire/smoke was entering the cabin we would evacuated the cabin.