Originally Posted by SchmeckFlyer
I was wondering how test evacuations, as the one that will be conducted on the A380 sometime soon, are made as authentic as possible? I would imagine that if all 800 pax know it is merely a test, their lungs and eyes are not really burning, and flames are not visible, things may more than a little less real.
I seem to remember long ago watching a programme in which one way to entice the kind of chaos in a real evacuation is to give monetary awards to the pax who get down the slides first, simulating the need in a real emergency to get away ASAP.
Any thoughts?
Put a sheaf of J upgrade vouchers behind glass next to each exit door, "To be broken only in case of emergency."
There were some stories, pre-Toronto, that Airbus proposed to run the evac tests with only a fraction of the full load of passengers, and then cobble up some sort of statistical analysis to show that everybody on a full flight would get off in a real accident.