FlightCom Magazine 7
chief hostie), one injury was a broken leg
while the rest were burns from the slides.
Overall, it was considered a huge success,
and as a result, the A380 is certified to carry
875 passengers.
The National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB) in the USA has published the
startling fact that on average, one emergency
evacuation occurs every 11 days in the States
alone. This does cover all aircraft types,
from LSAs to heavies, but nonetheless, it is
surprising with its regularity.
As a result, there’s a lot of data out there
concerning human behaviour during the
evacuation process, as well as the categories
and processes thereof.
The UK CAA has published a paper
entitled ‘A Database to Record Human
Experience of Evacuation in Aviation
Accidents’, which is as dull as ditchwater
from a reading point of view, but it does
have some interesting facts about how well
or badly the process has played out.
The extensive analytical process
is detailed in great depth, but being a
superficial pilot-type, I am only really
interested in the gory details.
In terms of types of evacuations, we can
recall from our wonderfully entertaining
Safety and Emergency Procedures Training
(SEPT) that we have the Long Planned (or
Prepared), then the short version of the
planned, as well as the Unplanned. Then of
course we need to consider if we are bailing
out onto land or water.
Of the 49 accidents examined by the
above-mentioned paper, percentage of
survivors ranged from 24% to 100%. Of
these individuals, around 42% partook
in this particular study by interview or
questionnaire.
The aircraft involved ranged from a
Jetstream J31 to the MD11.
The first data set concentrated on age
and gender, which produced a classic bell-
curve graph indicating that the individual
with the highest probability of survival is
the 42 year-old male, closely followed by
the 39 year female.
The next aspect is response time to the
evacuation call. This, unsurprisingly, is
fairly short, as there is significant motivation
in this regard. What did become apparent
here is that gender again influenced this
response rate, but purely because of
‘seat belt difficulty’. Men were faster at
unbuckling and getting up, and headed up
the categorisation of ‘Gave Help to OtherPax’, versus ‘Difficulty, no help required’
and ‘Difficulty, help required’ – the latter
group predominantly made up of young and
elderly passengers.
The ‘difficulty’ stemmed from inability
to release the buckle due to lack of lighting,
injury, unconsciousness and blatant
stupidity of not knowing how the buckle
works. That’s why we have that seemingly
moronic instruction at the beginning of all
the safety briefings.
Another aspect considered is that of
Seat Climbing, which as the term implies,
describes passengers baling over the top of
chairs (both forwards and backwards) before
getting to an exit or aisle. Here the ladies
shine, as they have a higher percentage than
the men for employing this technique. The
reasons given for this are understandable:
aisles blocked by other passengers and
viable exits visible close by – this option
provided the path of least resistance.
As discussed earlier, there is a
certification requirement of completing the
demonstrated evacuation in 90 seconds.
This assumes that all participants are
individuals, with no social or family bonds.
This study has indicated that this is indeed
a fatal assumption, as around 50% of any