It was a fun morning and good to put a few faces to some familiar forum names.

Melyvn, as said before on this post, the aircraft is stunning and no doubt will gather much more praise in time.

In the USA between 1981 – 91 there were 12 evacuation demonstrations – out of the 3761 participants some 212 received some sort of injury which is quite a number.
Any attempt to reduce this can only be a good thing – if you are worried about the 90 second rule (including slide deployement) then reduce the allowable time by say 5 seconds.

The document referred to above only gives details of what is supposed to happen not what did happen regarding the upper deck of 747.

Whose rules are Airbus being permitted to flout ? the FAA who have no juristriction here or the JAA who do. If those who make the rules here allow this then no rules are being broken. Am sure that Airbus/JAA/FAA would be discussing this as it would be a risky action to take without the support of those in authority.

The max capacity issue is only really going to apply to the Japanese domestic carriers whose aircraft will not be used on routes to the USA anyway. How many airlines actually use the full capacity of a 747 in terms of how many it is certified to carry.

Well Boeing does not exactly play fair either – the volunteers for such tests are all fit, healthy and may well have done an evacuation test before so not really a fair representation of who might be on board in term of age (ie no children or elderly pax)

It would be interesting to run a test with a more typical mix of passenger or even a test for a specific type of route flown ie the passenger mix on a typical charter flight to Palma will be totally different from that on the LHR-MAN shuttle yet could be the same aircraft type.

btw – did Boeing use the slides on the upper deck when getting the 747 certified.

There is also the question of risk to the volunteers – it is one thing to use an evacuation slide for real when in serious danger and the slide offers less risk, it is another thing entirely for a test where the only risk of injury or even death is using the slide itself.

Bmused,

I thought it was the American Airlines DC10 crash at O’hare that caused the grounding of the DC10’s? You are correct in saying that the aft cargo door was the cause however the behind the crash go further back. Several months before the THY crash an American Airlines DC10 suffered a similar aft cargo door failure and partial floor collapse but the controls were not broken and the crew made a safe landing. This led to a strengthening of the rear floor area and a redesign of the latching mechanism as it was found that it could be closed, indicate latched but the locking pins may not be fully in the correct position. Another factor to consider is that MCD were in the process of moving production to Long Beach and in the process 1 aircraft mod’s were not done – this became TC-JAW? the one that crashed in Paris. There was no excuse for this to be missed but like a lot of aircraft accidents there is a chain of often small occurences that in isolation may not be a problem but put together lead to disaster.

Another interesting point is the vunerability of the hydraulic systems for the tail control surfaces ie the UTD DC10 at Sioux City where an uncontained No2 engine failure broke the hydraulic lines and the subsequent crash and loss of life.
Lockheed on the other hand had considered this and routed one hydraulic line away from the others so reducing the risk of damaging all 3 at the same time. If you ever see along the top of the fuselage of a L1011 you will see this alternative route.

yes – I am sure the original ones for Dan Air & Queen’s Flight were ‘HS’ rather than Bae

HS146 = 4 oil leaks flying in close formation 😉

wasn’t the Dakota dervied from the Douglas Aircraft C(K)Ompany Transport Aircraft ?

No PTV’s on the A330’s either, just the holes where they should be.

As for service its ok although the long haul cabin crew are on the ‘mature’ side – well the one that served our section certainly was (she could have done with some smiling lessons as well)