Seconds to Disaster: US Edition (8 page)

Veteran aviation employees
will tell you that airline people used to run airlines and they knew the
business—they loved the idea of flight, loved the industry and understood that
it was unique. Harnessing nature and carrying humans aloft to where they wish
to go is not foolproof, but it has great rewards. However, it demands
incredible foresight and preparedness.

Unscrupulous elements see this
skill and a love for the industry as a weakness. They exploit it, while
stealing each day another small piece from the safety envelope, viewing pilots
and others as—“lemons, I squeeze until they are dry”— this comment from a major
low fares airline CEO about his pilots.

Your safety is—among others—in
the hands of those pilots who fly you, the flight attendants who evacuate you,
the engineers who service those planes and the air traffic controllers who help
guide the increasing amount of air traffic. Their caliber, the quality of their
training and their mental and physical health must be a priority.

But what if the pursuit of
profit interferes with a safe company? An airline may have a string of major
safety issues without the flying public ever knowing; even the crews flying
with that airline may be kept in the dark.

As we’ve seen, because many
reports are withheld either by those involved, by airlines or regulators, the
true number of incidences is unknown.

Mary Schiavo, former Inspector
General of the United States Department of Transportation, suggests airlines that
continually fail to adhere to the rules, and generate high numbers of safety
violations, should be fined, publically and a list disseminated to the
travelling public. Chesley Sullenberger believes there should be a worldwide
safety web, where safety issues can be shared. “How much safer we would be if
we had this system,” an investigator working on the AF447 disaster told us. But
to do that regulators themselves need more funding— not less, as is often the
trend—if they are to be independent from and uninfluenced by the industry they
govern.

We’ve discussed much
throughout our journey in this book and hope it will generate debate, and
hopefully some action. Aviation is considered safe because it has always been
predicated on an improving rate of reducing fatal accidents. The worrying
trends we highlight in this book have halted that improvement and risk
reversing it if regulators in particular don’t listen to the concerns of those
on the frontline.

Regular flyers should perhaps
take a moment to send one email, reminding regulators of their obligation to
you
,
the passenger, not to the airlines.

Don’t doubt that your mail
will make a difference; look at recent events where social media has changed
nations. Contact any public representative, tell them to step up to the plate
and do their job.

As for what else you can do, put
more consideration into what kind of airline you want to fly with in future. In
many ways how an airline treats its passengers may be a reflection of how that
same airline treats its employees. And from this you may well assume the
condition of their safety culture.

To some degree, your safety is also in your own hands.
Make wise and informed decisions on the basis of the information in this book
and you, your family and loved ones ought to remain safe when flying.

1. Avoid airlines
banned
by the European Union.

2. Avoid airlines from FAA
downgraded
countries.

3. Avoid carriers under
industrial strife; they may hire-in temporary crews or other carriers to help
maintain the flight schedule.

4. Low cost does not at
once mean low safety; but as the industry fights to survive, it can.

5. Although you book with
a major airline, the chances are growing in Europe that a smaller carrier was
contracted to do the flight. Some are good, some are bad. Ask which regional
carrier you'll be flying with, and do yourself a favor and check their safety
record online before you fly.

6. If flying with children,
use a proper safety harness as described in this book, and not a loop belt.

7. When and where
possible, avoid flying in extremes of weather, and especially with smaller
carriers.

8. When possible, avoid
flying in world regions where air accidents are more common and air safety does
not always appear to be paramount: most of Africa, parts of the Russian
Federation. If you have to, then do not fly with airlines mentioned in tip 1, 2
and 3.

9. Always try to pick a
seat in the 'survival' zone.

According to studies, some
seats offer a higher percentage of survivability in certain accidents where an
evacuation is required.

The world leading Fire Safety
Group at Greenwich University led by Professor
Ed Galea, studied more than a hundred plane crashes and interviewed almost two
thousand survivors.

They found an interesting
statistic: the majority of survivors in fatal accidents had only to move 5 seat
rows or less to an exit. Less surprising perhaps, those in an aisle seat had a
slightly higher survival percentage rate than those seated in window seats.

A comment that crews often
hear from their non-aviation friends is: “The safety demonstration—big deal
I’ve seen it before and anyway if we crash we are dead.”

Wrong.

Over ninety-five percent of
passengers in accidents survive but many of the five percent died because of
incorrect actions before, during and after the accident. And no matter how
often you travel, most people’s motor actions are not trained for such an event.
In a crash or major incident you may have to rely on tired and overworked
flight attendants to show you the way out of a life threatening situation, so
educate yourself.

Here’s an abbreviation which
some airlines use to instill instinctive reactions in their crews:
S.O.S.
=
S
urvive the impact, get
O
utside,
S
urvive outside.

S.
O.S.

S
urvive the impact.

That announcement onboard
asking you to pay attention even if you are a regular traveler; they aren’t
kidding. Just like the pilots and flight attendants, practice does make perfect
and where survival is concerned, appropriate reactions are worth striving for.

Imagine if someone hit you with
a baseball bat then held your head over a barbeque -that’s how it may feel in
the case of an accident. You’d be hard pushed to think clearly about what you
should do to get out of the situation. Having survival actions engraved on your
brain is the key. History shows even experienced crew get it wrong; if you
assume you know what to do because you have seen it before and often, you may
want to think twice and put down that newspaper.

Here’s an example: you travel
by car much more often than you fly. Picture yourself trying to get out of that
car in a hurry for any reason you want. What is the first thing you’ll do?
You’ll push down on the seatbelt release to free yourself from restraint. In
the event of an aircraft accident or incident you may in all probability push
down on that seatbelt release because it’s what you are used to doing, and it
won’t work. According to Professor Ed Galea, this is a common occurrence in
accidents and has led to deaths.

This universal action is
called reversion. People revert to normal behavior, to predominant actions.
Pilots who used to fly one type of aircraft for many years and now fly another
are known to revert to procedures for their previous aircraft under stress or
fatigue.

Flight attendants flying
everyday on different aircraft types open doors without disarming the emergency
escape chutes all the time; they assume they know which aircraft they are on
and they’ve seen it before. But they can still get it wrong when they stand at
that door and lift instead of lowering, push instead of pull, or arm instead of
disarming.

Back to our emergency where
you may spend ten seconds or more trying to figure out what you are doing
wrong; time in which you should have been trying to escape, and in aircraft
accidents, time may not be on your side.

Regulators give manufacturers
90 seconds to empty an aircraft during trials. And in those trials half the
exits will fail. However, you can bet that every one of those test passengers
were told moments before by their crew to LIFT on the latch to open that belt,
and were reminded also of the location of the exits.

Why does this reversion happen
even to people who fly many times a week? A certain area of the nervous system
takes over in emergencies, preparing you for ‘fight or flight’, and you go into
safemode, or basic mode. If car travel is your predominant method of transport,
your brain will revert to this familiar situation.  Do yourself a favor and
remind the brain before takeoff where you are.

The pilots, the flight
attendants, Air Traffic and Emergency Services on the ground, all know what
part they will play in the event of something going wrong. The safety demonstration
is when you are told your part. It only works if the team is cohesive and you
may well find yourself part of that team. Flight attendants may become
incapacitated in some way and you could find yourself having to open a door, or
if you sit at an overwing exit, you will have to open it in the event of an
evacuation.

Oxygen masks
may drop down. Put them on at once. Don’t ask
questions or wait to be told. You may only have seconds before passing out. No
matter how silly you feel, or even if you sense nothing wrong, put on the mask—the
cockpit crew or the aircraft has obviously detected a problem if the oxygen
masks are deployed. It could be a slow leak of pressure with the air in the
cabin dwindling away without any apparent indication while you become
increasingly happy due to oxygen starvation. You may see the flight attendants
grabbing the nearest masks and jumping on a nearby passenger’s lap. Meanwhile
the pilots could be coping with their full face masks and the inherent
restrictions to clear thought and communications they pose. In this case, there
may not be an announcement for some time that something may be wrong.

On many aircraft, oxygen masks
will drop down automatically above a certain loss of cabin pressure, then an
automatic public address will play over and over telling you to sit down — anywhere
— put on the mask and strap in. Unless you are in a toilet on a US registered
aircraft, where oxygen masks were removed due to security “concerns”, concerns
that apparently overrode the safety worries of many who objected. And if your
child is travelling on your lap there may only be one mask per seat leaving you
with a choice; and remember too that the mask is not really designed with
children in mind, so make it a snug fit.

Don’t expect to feel a rush of
oxygen coming at you from the mask. A chemical process in the system above your
head is gently oozing out oxygen at a steady rate for the next fifteen minutes
or so, as the aircraft descends to a safe level where the masks are no longer
required by passengers and crew. As the demo says, do put on your own mask
first, because if you fiddle around with your child’s, or your partner’s you
may well pass out first and not finish the job for either of you.

Different airlines may
show you slightly different brace positions but they all have the same basic
goal; to get you down as low as you can to prevent a whiplash, or “jackknife”
effect on your body. It’s getting harder to actually brace yourself with seats
crammed ever closer together, but pushing your body forward and down as much as
possible will make all the difference. Crash victims who do not adopt this
position “flail” upon impact and fracture limbs and skulls on the seat in front
of them.

Rear facing seats, as the
military have adopted for decades in its air transports, as well as many
business jets, would dramatically improve safety, but public comfort and
perceptions prevent it, for now. Business class configurations have used a head
to toe seating for some time now. One seat faces forward, with the seat beside
facing rearwards. It makes for an airy cabin and there are few complaints about
flying backwards. The idea of putting seats head to toe on more flights is
being considered because airlines can fit more passengers in that way.

S.
O.
S.

G
et
O
utside

“It’s often claimed that frequent flyers have a good
knowledge of the aircraft, and that recent fliers also have a good knowledge of
the aircraft layout. Of great concern is the result that only a little more
than a quarter of the ‘recent frequent flyers’ could identify the number of
exits, locate their position and identify their relative size,” says Professor Galea,
whose group also completed a three and a half year vital study into the 911
evacuation of the twin towers.

A worrying revelation occurred
when Galea surveyed aircraft passengers and their exit knowledge. The team
discovered that only about twenty-five percent of people knew where the exits
were and how small the overwing exits may be.

But does size really matter? In
this case it does. The most common aircraft types are narrow body Airbus A320’s
and Boeing 737’s.

During the safety briefing on
these aircraft, crew will tell you there are, “Two at the back, two at the
front and two in the middle.” There’s a famous phrase plugged by flight attendants,
“there may be more than 50 ways to leave your lover, but only four ways to
leave this airplane.”

You should also know that a
fire can become uncontrollable on an aircraft in less than two minutes; one of
the reasons evacuation certification for an aircraft is 90 seconds, even for
the 900 seat Airbus A380.

Here’s the gotcha on smaller
aircraft—at those big doors you can walk out; at the smaller overwings, you
have to climb out.

Exit size does matter. In many
accidents, passengers were crammed at the overwing exits trying to get out,
while in front of and behind them the large door exits were moving fast or vacant
altogether. In videos of aircraft evacuations, two or three passengers at
overwing exits can be seen getting jammed together. “This inherent lack of exit
knowledge is likely to have a negative impact on overall evacuation efficiency
and hence passenger safety,” says Galea’s group. “The pre-flight briefing makes
no mention of the size of the exits and the impact this may have on evacuation
times.”

They recommend that passenger
briefings emphasize the location and type of exits because irrespective of
flight experience, two fifths of passengers surveyed elected to use the
smaller, slower overwing exits.

Ed Galea and his team have
also found that in
one-third
of accidents analyzed, more than
half
of aircraft exits were unusable due mainly to failure of the door or slide
during emergencies. That exit you have your eye on may not be usable. As a
passenger, it would be wise to have two exits in mind, not just one. Educate
yourself. Remember, not all aircraft doors are created equal, so next time you
fly take a moment to see where those exits are, and if you are involved in an
evacuation, watch for movement and make your choice wisely.

Remember, it doesn’t matter if
you fly every day, you are in a non-normal and highly dynamic environment.

Remind your brain where it is.

Keep in mind the five seat row
rule.

Keep your shoes on for takeoff
and landing: easier to run over burning material and for getting away from an
aircraft on the ground.

Remember the critical eleven
minutes, three minutes after takeoff, eight before landing. Pay attention; be
alert. Don’t wear headphones, or eye covers during this time.

A common belief is that total
panic will ensue in the event of an emergency. Not so. Survivor reports from
crew and passengers tell of terrified passengers carrying out instructions and
lining up for exits. Crying and shouts can be heard, raised voices, all normal
for people with an elevated level of stress.

Pulling out luggage to take
with you down that slide may kill not just you but others. This is the main
obstruction to aircraft evacuations.

If it isn’t in your pocket,
leave it behind.

All over the world pilots and flight
attendants are amazed as they watch videos of passengers evacuating burning
aircraft whilst clutching suitcases and bags, possibly obstructing evacuation,
such as the A340 aircraft that overran the runway in Toronto in 2005. ‘Although
all passengers managed to evacuate, the evacuation was impeded because nearly
50 per cent of the passengers retrieved carry-on baggage,’ said Canadian
Investigators.

S.O.
S.

S
urvive outside.

You’ve survived the impact, you’ve got out, now you want
to survive outside.

There’s a photograph in
circulation of a passenger sitting in a life raft, with an inflated
life
vest
wrapped about his neck. He’s lucky. If he’d entered the water that way
the life vest could either have come off or strangled him.

Watch how to put the vest on
correctly; they aren’t all the same design.

Even if you are taking off in the
midland state of Kansas, you may need a flotation device of some sort. (A wide
river wraps about Kansas City Airport, the Missouri.)

Many airports are situated
close to or adjacent to water either in the form of a lake, river or the sea,
because this offers among other things better take off performance for
aircraft—less things to hit on the way out or in: as is the case Chicago, New
York JFK, San Francisco, Kansas City, and many more cities.

You don’t have to ditch in the
sea to require a flotation device or life vest; as runway excursions or runoffs
remain one of the main aircraft accidents, aircraft do end up in the water.

Even small commercial aircraft
or business jets are taller than you, and if the aircraft is just sitting in
water, you may need to get away from it and the surrounding water could be deep,
or very fast moving, littered with jagged debris, or coated with aircraft fuel
in which it is impossible to swim. You will need to float.

Do Not
inflate your life vest before leaving the aircraft, not
until you get out. If your aircraft does not have life vests, as on some US
internal flights, take a flotation device with you—meaning the seat cushion you
have your backside on.

An inflated life jacket will
slow you down inside the cabin and will delay you or even prevent you and
others from getting out. Most importantly, if water enters the aircraft- as
with the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 that broke up as it ditched close to the
shore — an inflated jacket will cause you to float to the top of the cabin and absolutely
prevent any movement or escape. The bodies of many passengers on the Ethiopian
aircraft who had survived the initial impact were found inside the cabin with
their lifejackets inflated. If you are on an aircraft that does carry
lifejackets, have a look to see if your lifejacket is actually there, as they
do get stolen. Some cost saving airlines do not carry spares, or carry very
few.