18 Minutes to Evacuate a Burning Plane: Success Story or Cautionary Tale?
wsj.com
wsj.com
In the event of a crash on land, you need to follow what the placards say - not the stewards, not the pilots, and certainly not your fellow passengers: look out the window for smoke, fire or other dangers, and if you do not see any then immediately open the door and evacuate.
It would be nice to be able to follow the cabin crew's instructions, but as the article notes, even the US government finds their decision-making to be "poor". I'm open to change my mind if I see strong evidence to the contrary, but otherwise this looks like yet another case of that.
What many fail to appreciate is that seconds matter when a plane crash lands. It is guaranteed to have a large amount of incredibly hot, damaged components sitting next to a large amount of jet fuel. Only a few years ago a jet was engulfed in flames only seconds after landing (Aeroflot 1492) and the slow evacuation, this time caused by selfish passengers opening overhead bins, caused deaths. Even still, half of the jet was able to evacuate in between 55-70 seconds depending on who you ask. Eighteen minutes is an eternity when you are sitting in a death trap that can kill everyone inside in seconds - there's a reason 90 seconds is the legal maximum evacuation time.
You say "with half the exits randomly blocked as they were in this test", but the WSJ article points out the A350 certification test calls for four exits, while in this crash "Only two of the plane’s exits at the front and one at the back were initially deemed safe—one less than the total used in the certification tests." and "The exit at the back was also likely available only temporarily before the flames had spread, leaving passengers near the back of the plane needing to reach the front two exits".
Clearly this was more difficult than the certification test scenario.
You also failed to point out how the tests are run with a level floor, while this crash ended up with was nose down, resulting in a sloped floor that was likely harder to traverse. How much harder? I don't know - maybe the certification test should include this case?
You also failed to note that the 18 minutes includes the extra time for the captain to do a final sweep plane. That check is not required for certification. How much time did it add? I presume the captain had knowledge that it was safe to make that check.
And of course everyone in the certification test knows what's about to happen.
> What many fail to appreciate is that seconds matter when a plane crash lands.
Why do you think people don't fully appreciate that? It's even in the WSJ article: “The 90 second rule is there for a reason, because that aircraft can obviously be incinerated in seconds,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
What you don't appreciate is that evacuation may not be the best thing to do after a plane crash, and as an untrained passenger you are not as well qualified to make that decision as the crew.
And most certainly the placards do not tell you to ignore the cabin crew, as you believe.
> and the slow evacuation, this time caused by selfish passengers opening overhead bins, caused deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_1492#Evacuatio... says that's speculation, and "According to TASS, citing a law enforcement source, the majority of passengers in the tail end of the aircraft had practically no chance of rescue; many of them did not have time to unfasten their seat belts. He added that those passengers from the tail section of the aircraft who managed to escape had moved to the front of the aircraft before it stopped, and that he had no confirmation that retrieval of luggage had slowed the evacuation."
In any case, even if true, your point is only relevant if the crew had delayed calling for evacuation, while the video shows essentially immediate evacuation after the Aeroflot plane stopped moving. And you know who sits next to the doors that were used? The cabin crew.
> the legal maximum evacuation time
Legal maximum evacuation time for certification. The law does not require that everyone be able to evacuate from any crash within 90 seconds.
In the Gottröra crash in Sweden there were a few passengers who were stuck in the plane wreckage for over half an hour until emergency services could arrive. https://youtu.be/OR0WfTUDj-U?t=1421 .
We don't have the entire thing on continuous video, but from various passenger videos and timestamps we know it was under one minute.
>Clearly this was more difficult than the certification test scenario.
Of course! "The plane was on fire and full of toxic smoke" would honestly be a bigger issue than the not-all-that-severely tilted floor in my opinion, but either way I think anyone would agree that this is more difficult than the certification test. Honestly, I think the certification should be much stricter, given how fast planes can burn. That is a different discussion.
>Why do you think people don't fully appreciate that?
Because there are several comments here saying you should stay put and saying outrageous things such as that you should stay inside as you could be hurt while using the slide, which is ridiculous to me while discussing an airliner that burned to the ground shortly after evacuation.
>And most certainly the placards do not tell you to ignore the cabin crew, as you believe.
I never said this. I did however imply that you should ignore cabin crew if they delay evacuation of a burning plane for several minutes, which I will stand behind. To quote another comment of mine - Had you followed crewmember instructions you would have likely died with the majority of the passengers in the Sewol disaster, for example, or the majority of the children in the Okawa disaster. I have never needed to disobey a steward's order, but if it is between my life and disobeying a steward I will choose my life every time.
>According to TASS, citing a law enforcement source
You're citing a Russian propaganda outlet citing Russian law enforcement, but thankfully we have video to disprove this, of passengers that retrieved bags stored in the overhead compartments which obviously delayed the evacuation. There were also passengers that did escape the rear, even one seated only three rows from the tail!
>In any case, even if true, your point is only relevant if the crew had delayed calling for evacuation
I never said that the cabin crew were an issue in the evacuation of SU1492 - I used it as an example of what can happen when evacuation is delayed for any reason.
It seems like you're going somewhat crudely through my comments word by word and finding anything you can take issue at. That I "failed to note" this, or "failed to point out" that. I'm not sure that makes interesting discussion; I think the broader, more interesting discussion here is whether to sit and listen to crew for several minutes in a burning aircraft or act to escape. Had the cards fallen slightly differently, this plane would have been entirely incinerated within those 18 minutes. When seconds matter, in the case of the Sewol or the Okawa disaster or SU1492, a quick and decisive evacuation is nearly always the right course of action. In fact, we have other very similar examples of a failure to evacuate by crew that caused hundreds of fatalities - Saudia 163, for example. I am not sure if those exist for the opposite point, but I would be curious to hear of them. I have found the occasional injury but not even one death.
I have seen timestamped video for when the collision happened. Where have you seen a timestamped video showing the moment when the plane stopped?
> Of course!
Then why do you focus so much on "90 seconds" as if were a legal requirement or even expected time for evacuation in this scenario?
Even if that should be the new target, there will be crashes like Gottröra where passengers will be stuck and require specialized equipment to evacuate.
> Because there are several comments here saying you should stay put and saying outrageous things such as that you should stay inside as you could be hurt while using the slide, which is ridiculous to me while discussing an airliner that burned to the ground shortly after evacuation.
I'll quote what you wrote: "In the event of a crash on land, you need to follow what the placards say - not the stewards, not the pilots, and certainly not your fellow passengers: look out the window for smoke, fire or other dangers, and if you do not see any then immediately open the door and evacuate."
There are no qualifications in your statement, no "if the plane is on fire", only the blanket case "In the event of a crash".
Even if the plane is on fire, it can be safer to stay on the plane. If the plane's wheel is on fire after the brakes overheat, and the fire engines are seconds away, then staying on the plane is not risky, while evacuating has a likely chance of injuries, and having people on the ground hinders the fire response.
What you wrote is simply bad advice.
> I never said this. I did however imply that you should ignore cabin crew if they delay evacuation of a burning plane for several minutes, which I will stand behind.
A few paragraphs ago I quoted your exact text from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38871896 . It says exactly that, and does not imply what you say it does. No placard says anything like you suggest or imply to do.
"Delay the evacuation" is incomplete. Why are they delaying it? Is it because the fire crew is working on making it safe for evacuation? Is it because they are trying to determine which exits are safe to use? Are you judging the delay relative to omniscient knowledge of the situation, relative to what a well-trained crew would decide to leave, or relative to when a passenger would think to leave?
I expect a passenger is also more likely to make a mistake, and open an evacuation door when it's better to leave the door closed and use another door to evacuate.
> You're citing a ...
Technically I'm citing Wikipedia citing TASS citing an anonymous source.
But my point isn't that it's okay to take your luggage with you. No, don't do that. I don't think anyone here disagrees.
My point is that your example is not relevant to your argument concerning when as passenger should ignore the crew and initiate evacuation in their own.
> Had the cards fallen slightly differently, this plane would have been entirely incinerated within those 18 minutes.
Again, your 18 minutes baseline has built-in assumptions that wouldn't be relevant if the cards HAD fallen different.
The captain left at the 18 minute point, after doing a last walk-through check for passengers.
That means the captain, using information available to him for those exact cards, decided it was safe enough to do the walk-through.
Had the cards played different, had the cabin not been safe, there would be no walk-through so the time would have been less than 18 minutes.
Is Saudia 163, from nearly 50 years ago, the only example? And that's guiding your understanding of how to handle things?
If there were no fatalities, what would that tell you? That the flight crew is well trained in dealing with unwarranted passenger-initiated evacuations and have managed (so far) to keep passengers same from their wrong-doing?
That passengers initiate evacuations when things are generally safe, with a larger safety margin?
FWIW, a search for "unwarranted passenger-initiated evacuation" finds https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-recs/recletters/A93_125.p... from 1993 saying "between 1983 and 1992, six passengers were seriously injured during 11 passenger-initiated evacuations that occurred because of APU torchings."
Had cards fallen slightly differently, the two men "hanging on to the left wing: one to the leading edge, one to the trailing edge" while the plane was moving could have died.
There was a "Ryanair engine fire in Stansted Airport in 2002, where passengers evacuated themselves onto a burning wing, despite airport fire services personnel shouting at them to return inside the aircraft and evacuate via a usable exit" quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwing_exits with details at https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/factor200437.pdf .
Had cards fallen slightly differently, they could have died.
I expect there are a lot more cases like this since I found these with simple searches.
I don't have time for this style of discussion, but I will try to address what you said briefly, as I do believe it to be a life or death issue. The APU torching incidents don't apply here, there were no crashes and I have always focused on "after a crash" as that is an entirely different set of circumstances than simply seeing fire or smoke, not to mention far less common. No, Saudia 163 is not the only example, and I fail to see how it has lost its relevancy in the forty four years since. JAL516 took twenty seconds to come to a stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBLfnwhiJ1Y I focus on "90 seconds" because it is (very) approximately the time that an airliner can burn to the ground, if things happen just right, which they do with some frequency. That is also why I brought up SU1492 - not because of any side discussion about baggage or anything else, but because it burned to be unsurvivable in under 70 seconds. It is also why I focus on the long evacuation time, which by the video I linked appears to be closer to eight minutes than eighteen for the bulk of the passengers, with over six minutes to begin the evacuation. Either of those times are unacceptable, as the entire thing can burn to the ground in a fraction of that time. As the dust further settles around this incident I believe this position - that the evacuation was unnecessarily slow - will become more widely accepted.
At the end of the day, focusing on the actual content of both of our comments - I argue that after a crash on land, barring smoke or fire immediately outside the exit, you should evacuate the plane immediately. Of course you should first wait for crew instructions, but if they are not available or the orders contradict common sense then evacuate yourself. Yes, this may require disobeying the orders of crew, but it may save your life and that of others. Neither of our searches has found a single example of this costing even a single life, while there are crashes where it could have saved many lives. I'll take those odds.
As you correctly point out, it also shows people were evacuated by 8 minutes or so, not 18 minutes.
Which is why people are picking on you for writing "eighteen minutes to evacuate a burning aircraft is completely unacceptable."
You call it nitpicking, but we all disagree.
> I fail to see how it has lost its relevancy in the forty four years
Because training has changed since then. TIL about Air Canada Flight 797 in 1983. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_797 :
"The accident became a watershed for global aviation regulations, which were changed in the aftermath of the accident to make aircraft safer. New requirements to install smoke detectors in lavatories, strip lights marking paths to exit doors, and increased firefighting training and equipment for crew became standard across the industry, while regulations regarding evacuation were also updated. Since the accident, it has become mandatory for aircraft manufacturers to prove their aircraft could be evacuated within 90 seconds of the commencement of an evacuation, and passengers seated in overwing exits are now instructed to assist in an emergency situation."
My limited understanding from reading the transcript was the pilot wasn't really aware of the issue, the cabin crew wanted to know if they needed to evacuate after landing, the captain eventually said no, and that's why people believe there wasn't an evacuation.
My understanding of airplane operations in the 1970s was it was a hierarchical command structure, with the pilot in charge. This changed in the 1980s, as people found out that doesn't work well as the captain can be overloaded and make bad decisions. I understand the cabin crew now is able to order an evacuation on their own (could they then? I don't know), and are better trained on how to do so than 40 years ago.
> I argue that after a crash on land, barring smoke or fire immediately outside the exit, you should evacuate the plane immediately.
Please define "crash".
Ryanair FR5542 had a nose-gear failure during an emergency landing at Dublin airport. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGH67ftoJVA with sparks flying. Evacuation took over an hour. See https://youtu.be/bw4T4XJEqhU?t=3901 for the first passengers coming out.
Was that a crash? If so, following your guideline you would have evacuated immediately, right?
If not, what was it?
(JetBlue Flight 292 was another case; broken nose gear, which "generated sparks and flames when it touched down" during an emergency landing, and people began to disembark "less than seven minutes" after stopping, via airport stairs instead of evacuation slide; quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292 .)
Let's take the example I was thinking of, with overheated brakes and fuel leaking - Was Qantas Flight 32 a crash?
It suffered an uncontained failure of one engine while in flight, another engine couldn't be shut down after an emergency landing. "The pilots considered whether to evacuate the plane immediately after landing, as fuel was leaking from the left wing near to the brakes, which were assumed to be extremely hot from maximum braking" but, quoting the pilot:
"We’ve got a situation where there is fuel, hot brakes, and an engine that we can’t shut down. And really the safest place was on board the aircraft until such time as things changed. So, we had the cabin crew with an alert phase the whole time through ready to evacuate, open doors, inflate slides at any moment. As time went by, that danger abated, and thankfully, we were lucky enough to get everybody off very calmly and very methodically through one set of stairs."
All from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32 .
If that was a crash, would you have disobeyed the crew and evacuated anyway?
If it was not a crash as you define it, how could a passenger tell it was not a crash?
QF32 did not crash, it came down impressively softly - less than a quarter of the tires blew. FR5542 could be called a crash, I wouldn't, but you could. The landing of B6292 was described as "smooth". In those cases it would be obvious not to evacuate, but even if you did it would be hard to imagine even one death. To keep it simple - I have laid out several examples where delayed evacuation cost hundreds of lives. You have not managed to cite a single life lost by an evacuation triggered too early, not even one that would be lost in the various hypotheticals you posed.
I think we simply have different conclusions about the relative risks involved here, and it will take a lot to convince each other, so it's probably best to leave this argument here.
But I want to focus on where you got your ideas. The placards should be telling you to follow the directions of the crew members, and only if they are not available to assist should you do anything.
Here's the relevant US law, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/135.129
> (d) Each certificate holder shall include on passenger information cards, presented in the language in which briefings and oral commands are given by the crew, at each exit seat affected by this section, information that, in the event of an emergency in which a crewmember is not available to assist, a passenger occupying an exit seat may use if called upon to perform the following functions:
> (1) Locate the emergency exit;
> (2) Recognize the emergency exit opening mechanism;
> (3) Comprehend the instructions for operating the emergency exit;
> (4) Operate the emergency exit;
> (5) Assess whether opening the emergency exit will increase the hazards to which passengers may be exposed;
> (6) Follow oral directions and hand signals given by a crewmember;
> (7) Stow or secure the emergency exit door so that it will not impede use of the exit;
> (8) Assess the condition of an escape slide, activate the slide, and stabilize the slide after deployment to assist others in getting off the slide;
> (9) Pass expeditiously through the emergency exit; and
> (10) Assess, select, and follow a safe path away from the emergency exit.
Notice the phrases like "in which a crewmember is not available to assist" and "Follow oral directions and hand signals given by a crewmember"?
That is not at all telling you to ignore the stewards or pilots, and I think it's very bad advice.
You (as a passenger) have received nowhere near the training as the crew have in how to recognize possible dangers, or to judge when it is appropriate to stay on the plane vs. leave.
If you plane crash lands on an airfield, and you see no smoke, fire or other dangers, why leave the plane? Can you tell if fuel is pooling up near overheated brakes? Probably not. But you know who can? The fire fighters who don't want passengers keeping them from dumping loads of water and foam onto the scene.
It's also risky to evacuate. People hurt themselves going down the slides.
This took under a minute.
>The placards should be telling you to follow the directions of the crew members, and only if they are not available to assist should you do anything.
The placards on almost every aircraft I have flown indicate that in a crash, you should look for smoke, fire, debris or water, and then open the door immediately thereafter. That is because it is good safety practice. You are correct that everywhere in the world you're also instructed to follow crewmember instructions (obviously) but I'm sorry, I'm not going to die because of crew incompetence. Had you followed crewmember instructions you would have likely died with the majority of the passengers in the Sewol disaster, for example, or the majority of the children in the Okawa disaster. I have never needed to disobey a steward's order, but if it is between my life and disobeying a steward I will choose my life every time.
>Can you tell if fuel is pooling up near overheated brakes? Probably not.
In virtually every crash of this severity the answer to "is there fuel leaking near overheated components" is "yes", which is exactly why it is important to evacuate the aircraft as quickly as possible.
>But you know who can? The fire fighters
Not if they're not there - yet another example of the gross incompetence displayed by this crash was the slow response by the airport fire services.
>It's also risky to evacuate. People hurt themselves going down the slides.
It's much riskier to stay inside of a plane that will burn to the ground, which is indeed what happened here.
The pilots and cabin crew are in a far better position to assess the dangers than you are.
You may be surprised to learn that the exhaust presents a greater danger than the intake on a running turbofan engine. You may be even more surprised to learn that there was some thought put into the emergency placards in the aircraft; the evacuation slides on modern aircraft such as the A350 are certified for use even with the engines still running, although for obvious reasons they should be shut down if possible. That is why both the fore and aft center slides are angled away from the engines.
Simply because the CFRs do not require something do not make it untrue. The fact of the matter is that your original comment was simply incorrect, you would not be sucked into a turbofan engine if you use the emergency slides fore of the engines.
The discrepancy between "can be evacuated in 90s in a simulated emergency" and "actually evacuated in 18min in real emergency with untrained members of the general public (with 100% survival despite the inferno)" just doesn't strike me as that problematic.
The important measurement is time from plane stopping to passengers getting off.
I have nothing but applause for the JAL crew, what they pulled off rivals the Miracle of the Hudson.
Short of asking a pilot how they could make a calculated risk, I found the following. The International Society of Air Safety (9.11) notes that there "when practical, the commander may decide to check the entire passenger cabin before leaving the aeroplane." The section also notes some potential disadvantages of the flight crew helping with the evacuation.
https://www.isasi.org/Documents/Library/raes-emergency-evacu...
I literally laughed out loud at this.
People can't seem to orderly exit a plane under regular conditions, without panic, without smoke, without an incline. I'd love to see the videos of evacuations during the certification process.
I also have to wonder if they have a representative group of body sizes, age, and physical ability in their tests.
>I also have to wonder if they have a representative group of body sizes, age, and physical ability in their tests.
They do indeed. They also have dimmed lights, randomly blocked doors, and debris strewn throughout the cabin.
Tell the FA's that the captain will signal the evacuation, and then don't let him.
Fill the cabin air with fake smoke, and have noise equal to one side of the engines running at go-around power outside the plane.
Now try… ten. Just ten open-close cycles after sitting down at the beach.
The majority of the slowdown seems to be from people who aren't ready to move down the aisle blocking those who are trying to go down the aisle.
If people would wait until a gap to enter the aisle to grab their bags the whole thing would go a lot faster.
In an emergency you're not supposed to grab your bags, but somehow I imagine this behavior to still play a role.