Are the chances really great the the plane would do a sudden quick about face or flip over because it tilted slightly and the engine(s) on one side started scooping water?

How much time do the passengers have before enough water seeps into the baggage compartment and the plane itself sinks?

Wouldn't there have to be trained personnel on each life raft to disconnect it from the plane before the plane sinks, dragging the raft(s) down with it?

Hey Allan J, Engines are supposed to release from their mounts on the wings with the force of the water, damage to the body of the fuselage would determine the rate of sink of the aircraft, and last but not least, the lanyard made of nylon rope which is tethered to the aircraft, is stressed to a certain breaking point and would part if the fuselage sank. A responsible person would assert themselves as liferaft commander if no crew member was in the raft, a checklist is aboard to help with the next steps. Ken.

no personal experience of this, but there is a thread (live at the moment) about this issue (an FTer was booted out of the exit because they didn't speak french)... but I can't for the life of me find it!

regards

lme ff

Isn't there a crewmember usually sitting in a jumpseat at pretty much every exit door?

Hi,

Probably at the main doors but not at the overwing exits ( B737, A319/320, B757/b767) where the doors are more like hatches.

Regards

TBS

Well I don't think the overwing slides can be used as floatation though....

What posters here seem not to be considering....

Any passenger aircraft in commercial service faced with a "Mid-ocean" ditching is likely to have serious mechanical problems likely make the aircraft at best only semi-controllable and certain to make an approach and "touch down" in in a classic wings level, nose up, into the wind/sea almost impossible.

The vague concept that water is "soft" seems to pervade the views of most folks. It's not, and at the minimum flying speeds possible in today's a/c or even more likely at the speed of a barely controllable a/c essentially "unable to fly" are going to bring about a "crash" scenario likely to severely damage/destroy an a/c's fuselage, certainly breaking it apart in two or more sections.

Mid ocean landing? Without many hours notice and extremely good luck, no rescue assets are going to reach the scene of the ditching. Even a ditching in San Francisco Bay of a large a/c with many souls on board is going to have a long period before any rescue craft arrive and the number of survivors is going to be small.

The old pictures of PanAm's Clipper ditching under near perfect sea conditions in close proximity to potential rescuers in no way present the likely fate of an a/c ditching today. No pilot with whom I've ever spoken would not make every available attempt to find some sort of runway (or even a seemingly level beach) for an attempted landing rather than attempt a ditching.

Reality strikes. Most of the gear is for "Show", much like an infant's security blanket, designed to at least convince pax that steps have been taken to improve survival odds. What pax don't realize is that the odds for survival have only been improved from "Little or no chance" to "Well, maybe somebody will be alive in a raft when the rescuers finally get there".

Yes, but unfortunately crew are not immune from dying in a ditching or crash.

Doors have placards explaining how to use the door and slide rafts have instructions on how to disconnect it from the aircraft.

767GE over wing exits/747 doors 3 and upper deck doors/A380 main deck doors 3 are not raft equipped doors and should only be used to get out of the aircraft if other doors are unusable. If you do use them, prepare to swim. I believe the same applies to A320/737 over wing exits.

On the 767RR doors 3 can be detached and used as a flotation devices but contains no emergency equipment and is a secondary means of escape. The same applies on the A330-200 doors 3.

I think you are correct....much of the emergency evacuation gear is just to make people feel better getting on board.

Even if the pilots were to manage a controlled water landing on calm seas, the chances of evacuating hundreds of people before the aircraft went under.....*

This is the reason why my mother refuses to take Ambien or any other sleep aid while on board, even for 17-hour flights. Whenever I bring it up, she says, "But what if the plane goes down and we have to evacuate? I don't want to be knocked out!"


*But that doesn't mean it's not important to train. I think it's absolutely essential that the FAs get retrained each year on the evacuation procedures.