Commercial Airline EDC

Watchful,

Excellent post. That really is the essence of aircrash survival.

I'll add this. Never inflate your vest until you are outside the plane in the event of a controlled water landing. The reason is that the aircraft will fill with water and you will float up and away from the open doors. You will go down with the ship trapped against a luggage rack. With the vest deflated you can slip through the door even after it goes under water while all the other poeple who didn't listen are bobbing above you towards the luggage racks. Mac
 
The ceramic knife thing you won't be able to do soon. They are testing out these new kind of density detectors, they don't just detect metal, but things that are solid (ceramic, hard plastic, ect). I don't know what they do about bone, but i'm sure they have that covered.
 
Since they rarely consider long term effects, they'll probably give a bunch of people bone cancer or some danged thing :rolleyes: .
 
Watchful said:
...you won't need to worry about what to carry in a plane crash because you'll unfortunately not survive...
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Alright already, I concede. You are, indeed, correct. :(

The best way, therefore, to prepare for a flight aboard a commercial airliner is to make sure (1) your life insurance is up to date and (2) you have a will that is up to date.

Which reminds me, I should take my own advice and really must get cracking on my will. :)
 
Now that I'm thinking about it... :D

Another former co-worker was on a flight that skidded completely off the runway here at O'Hare, returning from London.

Even though there was no significant damage, SOP required that the emergency inflatable slides be deployed.

Well, this guy's a pretty decent person, and he assisted the flight attendents with getting people off the plane.

Eventually, he was the only guy left...well, him and this completely inebriated musician who kept waking up and passing out, waking up and passing out.

So it was down to these two guys. My ex-colleague stands the drunk up, props him with his shoulder, and staggers him to the doorway and the edge of the slide. The drunk guy sort of comes to, looks down the ramp, and asks if they've crashed. Yes, sort of, they replied.

The drunk guy looks down the ramp and vomits onto the it. Scotch and chewed up food slides down down down the ramp.

My colleague, realizing that his EDC doesn't include a mop and towel or the little pink sawdust, elects to improvise. He shoves the drunk face first down the ramp, letting the guy's torso mop up the puke as he descends.

Very nice, quoth a flight attendent.

So my colleague, still hearing the drunk guy screaming at the bottom about something, kicks off his shoes and jumps to comfortable safety onto the newly polished slide...

...and jars his spine. At that moment, he realized two things: one--that they're not kiddie-slides, but are as hard as concrete, and two--that the guy at the bottom was screaming because his nose was broken by hitting the rock hard ramp face first.

At the bottom, my former colleague scurried away from the scene....
 
Watchful said:
...SOP required that the emergency inflatable slides be deployed.... they're not kiddie-slides, but are as hard as concrete....
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Great story, but how can inflated emergency slides possibly be that stiff? Hard enough to break that drunkard's nose, sure. As hard as concrete, through and through? That's a bit difficult to swallow.
 
It's how he described it to me. I guess if you're expecting something like a wading pool inflatable, and instead hit highly compressed air in canvas, it could well feel like concrete.

I hope to not find out!
 
Watchful said:
It's how he described it to me. I guess if you're expecting something like a wading pool inflatable, and instead hit highly compressed air in canvas, it could well feel like concrete.

I hope to not find out!
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First, are we talking canvas or cordura nylon or what?

Second, here's hoping none of us have occasion to find out. :)
 
Cardimon,

This was extremely difficult to find out! :confused: But I dug down. There are two primary manufacturers for these slides: Zodiac and BF Goodrich.

Zodiac claims their slide construction is pretty similar to BFG's, but couldn't find anything from the latter group to confirm this. Assuming Zodiac is right, and it's doubtful they'd make that claim otherwise...

The interior ("inflatable") of the slide is a nylon cloth coated on both sides with polyether-based polyurethane or neoprene. That should make it pretty solid, since neoprene under pressure can actually be very solid. How much pressure...? Couldn't find out.

However, the outer covering of the slide is a woven nylon cloth covered with a rough-surfaced "conductive" polyurethane designed to be what they call a "high traction" surface.

Given all this chemistry, it sounds like a fairly solid, resiliant inner surface covered by a rough outer surface. While not as hard as concrete, I can easily understand his description that it will feel like it on a jump.

He also griped that he never got his shoes back, either. :)

It'd be great if someone who installs, manufactures, or maintains evacuation slides could help out.
 
Watchful said:
He also griped that he never got his shoes back, either.
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I'd have to find out about the shoes bit, because no one gets my shoes. I'd tie the laces together and hang them over my shoulder, but I'm not leaving them behind. Lack of shoes would severly limit my mobility.
 
cardimon said:
I'd have to find out about the shoes bit, because no one gets my shoes. I'd tie the laces together and hang them over my shoulder, but I'm not leaving them behind. Lack of shoes would severly limit my mobility.
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I'm pretty sure--but again having never skiied out of a plane--that if you made a big enough fuss about keeping your shoes on, they'd let you. I can't imagine any airline staff officious enough to hold up an evacuation because someone wanted to leave their shoes on.

Based on your previous question about the material of the slide, I can't imagine any pair of shoes or boots slicing through the slide.
 
All right... I went back into my way-back machine and re-read his report on a what to do after a crash.

One other important survival tip I forgot above: if the plane is burning and you somehow escape from it... do NOT go back unless you have a loved one inside *or* are a trained first responder.

Only if the fire is pretty much out should you think about carefully salvaging stuff from the wreckage.

(He also suggests that if you survive a crash, be sure to nofiy somebody. He relates a story about a guy who walked away from a crash, grabbed a cab, and continued on his camping vacation...the airline thought he was a goner, notified his family, listed his name on the news as a victim, etc. When he got home three days later...well, everyone was a bit surprised.)
 
Watchful said:
One other important survival tip I forgot above: if the plane is burning and you somehow escape from it... do NOT go back unless you have a loved one inside *or* are a trained first responder.
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To me, that's a given.

Watchful said:
...if you survive a crash, be sure to nofiy somebody. He relates a story about a guy who walked away from a crash, grabbed a cab, and continued on his camping vacation...the airline thought he was a goner, notified his family, listed his name on the news as a victim, etc. When he got home three days later...well, everyone was a bit surprised.
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He sounds certifiable to me. That's plain nuts. He needs to have his butt kicked.
 
The craziest thing is, after passing thru Security, I can buy all the booze in GLASS BOTTLES in the duty-free stores that I want!
I always travel with a portable DVD player too, and IF I wanted a sharp on board the 'plane, Im pretty sure that a DVD/CD disc snapped in half would make a pretty nasty cutting implement!
Must admit that the most daring thing I carry on board is my AA Maglight & a sharpened "dog-tag" (with the edge covered by a rubber silencer) on my key-ring.
Of course, after the tragic events of 9/11, Im sure no-one admits to heightened security, but confiscating tweezers/nail clippers etc is just madness!
 
If you leave a burning plane (or building) and go back inside for a loved one the likelyhood is that you will both die. Fires are FAST and BAD once they have a hold and the smoke will disorient and knock you down. Fires and explosions are nothing like what you see on TV. Nothing like.... The fire survival techniques we all know are geared toward 'the best possible chance you may encounter' and do save lives. If you want to get all 'hero' be expected to be so posthumously.
I had a friend who was an accident investigator for an aerospace manufacturer. His experience with survivor interviews is that those who survive plane crashes did so because they left their kid, climbed over their wife and mother and fought like an animal to get out in the shortest possible time. As decent humans I know we wouldn't want to admit it, but there it is.
Gee I am sunny today. :D

Not asking for trouble, but yes, hope you DO have the chance to use the slide. It means you survived.
 
I'd say airline security has less to do with real-world security than it has to do with making a jittery populace feel safer about flying.
 
Merek said:
His experience with survivor interviews is that those who survive plane crashes did so because they left their kid, climbed over their wife and mother and fought like an animal to get out in the shortest possible time. As decent humans I know we wouldn't want to admit it, but there it is.
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I would not leave anyone, my wife for instance, behind.

I have just sealed my fate. But I am comfortable with that. I am expendable. To my mind, she is not.

I know survival sometimes means having to do distasteful things. As a human being and a husband, however, I would do my utmost to make sure I pushed, shoved, or threw my wife down the airplane slide before I went.

If we slide down holding hands, lovely. If we tumble down together, good enough. If I go down without her, unacceptable. If she does down without me, I can accept that.
 
Merek said:
If you leave a burning plane (or building) and go back inside for a loved one the likelyhood is that you will both die. Fires are FAST and BAD once they have a hold and the smoke will disorient and knock you down. Fires and explosions are nothing like what you see on TV. Nothing like.... The fire survival techniques we all know are geared toward 'the best possible chance you may encounter' and do save lives. If you want to get all 'hero' be expected to be so posthumously.
I had a friend who was an accident investigator for an aerospace manufacturer. His experience with survivor interviews is that those who survive plane crashes did so because they left their kid, climbed over their wife and mother and fought like an animal to get out in the shortest possible time. As decent humans I know we wouldn't want to admit it, but there it is.
Gee I am sunny today. :D

Not asking for trouble, but yes, hope you DO have the chance to use the slide. It means you survived.
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The facts are if the impact doesn't kill you the smoke inhilation will LOOONG before the fire does. Fire is much lessor problem in the scheme of things.

Skam
 
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