8 FlightCom Magazine
passenger contingent consists of family,
friends or colleagues. This, quite logically,
creates much confusion and concern during
an evacuation, with people looking for
friends and family, which greatly disrupts
the flow towards exits.
This is exacerbated by the fact that
families frequently get spread around the
cabin, as consecutive seats in a row become
unavailable during check-in. I’m sure the
certifying authorities have considered this,
but how exactly they would apply this to the
90-second rule, I’m not sure.
The bottom line is that actual evacuations
are unique and dynamic, and bear very little
resemblance to the certification trials.
The data pertaining to exit selection isinteresting, with a small majority actually
using exits behind their seat location.
Around 16% attempted to use the door
through which they entered the aircraft
during embarkation, as “that’s where they
thought the door was”, according to post
event questioning. The single biggest choice
of exit was split evenly between cabin crew
instructions and good old herd mentality.
On the subject of exits – book that seat
near one in future. The study reveals that
in situations where there is internal fire,
survivors are on average three rows from
an exit, while fatalities were between four
and five rows away from their nearest exit.
Or practice a bit of seat/fellow passenger
climbing ...While choosing that seat consider the
following statistic. The survival rate of
passengers seated in the front of the aircraft
(ahead of the wing) is 65%, while aft-seated
passengers don’t fare as well at 53%. Makes
a case for travelling business class.
This particular study focuses pretty
much exclusively on cabin safety, and thus
statistics for flight deck crew issues during
evacuations are not available. As our
primary exit is the main left door, resorting
to the use of the escape rope out of a cockpit
window is a sure indicator of a really bad
day at the office.
I suppose it’s up to us to ensure we don’t
need to evacuate in the first place.Airline Ops
ÞABOVE: 16 percent of passengers attempt to evacuate through the same
door they entered. Studying the safety card might be a good idea.