Thank you very much for posting this, I found it very informative. For those of you who don't want to watch the whole thing, here are a few changes to aircraft

Thank you very much for posting this, I found it very informative. For those of you who don't want to watch the whole thing, here are a few changes to aircraft that came about because of this study: - Distance between bulkheads (clearance in the aisles) must be at least 30" to stop bottlenecks during an evacuation - The guide lights in the aisles (for exit markers in case of smoke) - Crew members should take a aggressive tone when directing passengers, especially when telling them to "jump" onto the slides coming off of the aircraft. It's interesting to think that before 1985, there hadn't been any studies on people on aircraft in smoke situations. Maybe it's specifically the density of people in passenger jets that causes issues, but you'd think the military would have done studies about smoke in airplanes prior to the 80's. It's also interesting how much catastrophe investigation resembles bug hunting. The crash had four distinct features that made it such a disaster: - A internal piece of the engine, a combustor can, had a crack manually repaired via welding. Since the documentation to the mechanic didn't specify the maximum crack length that could be repaired, the weld was insufficient. - The combustor can exploded during takeoff, which broke through the wing's fuel line - The engine lit the leaking fuel line on fire - The fire caught a wind updraft, which engulfed the (otherwise fire-retardant) fuselage, causing poisonous smoke to fill the cabin in minutes. If any one of the 4 issues hadn't occurred, catastrophe could have been avoided. Piecing all that together really gives new meaning to the term "cascading escalating failure". Finally, the video mentioned how one door got stuck because the inflatable ramp failed to deploy. On modern aircraft, those ramps are no joke. If you've ever heard "Cross-check and verify" on a flight, it means to verify that the ramps (which explosively inflate) are activated [1]. The 'red strip' on a flight door means that opening said door with trigger the ramp. These things are pretty powerful and can be dangerous in their own right, if opened in the wrong situation [2]. [1] http://www.quora.com/What-do-all-the-controls-in-an-airplanes-cockpit-do http://www.quora.com/What-do-all-the-controls-in-an-airplane... [2] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326919223/emergency-slide-deploys-inside-u-s-jetliner-forcing-a-landing http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326919223/eme...