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> but from various passenger videos and timestamps we know it was under one minute. I have seen timestamped video for when the collision happened. Where have y

> but from various passenger videos and timestamps we know it was under one minute. 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 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.pdf 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwing_exits with details at https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/factor200437.pdf 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.

owenversteeg 3y ago
I said this once before and I will say it again, but going word by word through my comment and cross-examining every single thing isn't a good way to have a discussion. A lot of your strange little nitpicks have been downright wrong or irrelevant. It's entirely unimportant how you cited TASS or the structure of my sentence three comments back. 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 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.
- eesmith 3y ago
  You video does not show that JAL516 took twenty seconds to come to a stop. It's 20 seconds from the start of recording. It appears to be already on the ground and on fire when that video starts. 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGH67ftoJVA with sparks flying. Evacuation took over an hour. See https://youtu.be/bw4T4XJEqhU?t=3901 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 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 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?

owenversteeg 3y ago

I said this once before and I will say it again, but going word by word through my comment and cross-examining every single thing isn't a good way to have a discussion. A lot of your strange little nitpicks have been downright wrong or irrelevant. It's entirely unimportant how you cited TASS or the structure of my sentence three comments back. 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 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.

eesmith 3y ago
You video does not show that JAL516 took twenty seconds to come to a stop. It's 20 seconds from the start of recording. It appears to be already on the ground and on fire when that video starts. 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGH67ftoJVA with sparks flying. Evacuation took over an hour. See https://youtu.be/bw4T4XJEqhU?t=3901 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 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 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?