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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 dis

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 will say this for the final time - your detailed, hostile examination of minor points is irrelevant to the main point here. The plane may have come to a stop in twenty seconds or thirty or thirty-five but that has no bearing on my argument. Both eight minutes and eighteen are too long to evacuate an aircraft on fire; a few seconds more or less are a rounding error. Your citation of AC797 is yet another example of important a rapid evacuation is: it took ninety seconds for the aircraft to flash over and kill the remaining souls on board. When seconds count, you don't have eight minutes or eighteen or seventeen-forty-five-and-three quarters. 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.

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 will say this for the final time - your detailed, hostile examination of minor points is irrelevant to the main point here. The plane may have come to a stop in twenty seconds or thirty or thirty-five but that has no bearing on my argument. Both eight minutes and eighteen are too long to evacuate an aircraft on fire; a few seconds more or less are a rounding error. Your citation of AC797 is yet another example of important a rapid evacuation is: it took ninety seconds for the aircraft to flash over and kill the remaining souls on board. When seconds count, you don't have eight minutes or eighteen or seventeen-forty-five-and-three quarters. 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.