RickSeaney.com

Search

Search Past Articles:

Categories

Archives

  • Blogroll

    • August 7, 2008

    American Flight Attendants: Should They Have Deployed Slides?

    Filed under: Airplanes, Flight Attendants — Rick Seaney @ 10:29 am

    Did you happen to catch the video of that American jet that made an emergency landing at LAX this week because passengers reported smelling smoke?

    Those passengers exited the craft on evacuation slides — per orders of the flight attendants. Note: ultimately, investigators found no evidence of smoke, fire or any mechanical problem.

    Meanwhile, the evacuation temporarily closed two runways — and now, according to a Wall St. Journal report, the flight attendants are under scrutiny for not consulting with the pilot before deploying the slides. They didn’t have to, but it is “routine” to.

    People can get injured evacuating by slides. On the other hand, smoke and the possibility of fire is nothing to fool with. What do you think?
    « TIME Magazine: The “Stingiest” Airlines   Pay More, and — Live & Fly With It »

    4 Comments »

    1. I have never been a flight crew member, but my understanding is that there are fairly strict procedures to follow in the event of an emergency landing, which is what this was. The procedures are there because the few seconds on the ground after an emergency landing is not the time to rely on folks to have the “right interpretation” of common sense. We can complain about many things that flight attendants may do in the course of a flight…following procedure in the event of an emergency landing isn’t one of them.

      Comment by DRG — August 7, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

    2. It’s an easy answer: when you divert to the nearest airport due to possible smoke in the cabin, and you land opposite normal traffic (it landed with the wind, not into the wind), and if you’re on the fence about it, there’s no question about it: deploy the slides.

      Could you imagine the story if there really was smoke in the cabin and there was an incident because a FA was consulting the captain? I can’t believe that such a phone call would even be an implied procedure. That repulses me.

      An evacuation procedure when tested for the FAA or other authorities should take 90 seconds with one side of the doors closed. I don’t see how that could happen when you add in the ‘consultation’ phone call.

      Comment by AH — August 7, 2008 @ 4:22 pm

    3. What do I think ? You gotta be kidding. The flying public needs to understand that Flight Attendants are not on the aircraft to kiss your ass…they’re there to SAVE your ass !!….idiot……..

      Comment by Rockinhorse77 — August 24, 2008 @ 1:46 am

    4. Are airlines required to report emergency landings due to smoke in the cabin? My son was on an American flight last night that was forced to return to St. Louis. (AA # 5553, Dec 18) Oxygen masks had to be used. The commuter plane had NO slides. Passengers had to jump over 6 ft. American is apparently covering it up. The American system lists “equipment arrived late” as the reason why the flight arrived over 3 hours late. I don’t recall any “you may need to jump 6 ft.” warnings from American when I booked the flight. Is American hiding incidents rather than reporting them because of its FAA fine history?

      Comment by SDH Steve Huff — December 19, 2008 @ 6:35 pm

    RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI

    Leave a comment

    XHTML ( You can use these tags): <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> .