Sirens on the plane are sounding. Escaping death means escaping an airliner in flames and about to explode.
Every second counts after an emergency landing. Are Jet Blue, Southwest Airlines, United, Delta, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and all the other U.S.-based carriers still able to evacuate their planes safely within the mandated 90 seconds in case of an emergency? If not, this can cost lives.
Every airline in the world agrees on putting safety first. How true is this statement when a maximum load and the least amount of space guarantees maximum profits?
The U.S. Department of Transportaation Inspector General has initiated an audit to determine whether evacuations under current aircraft conditions can still meet the 90-second standard of deplaning passengers in an emergency.
The FAA standards haven’t changed significantly since 1990, but industry and consumer behavior have, the inspector general said in a statement today,
This statement says:
“Active evacuation of civil aircraft is a critical component of saving lives in the event of an aviation incident. The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) standards for evacuating passenger aircraft require that the aircraft can be fully evacuated in 90 seconds or less. To obtain FAA certification for a specific aircraft type, manufacturers must conduct actual demonstrations of emergency evacuations or a combination of tests and analyses, including computer simulations, that yield equivalent results. Stakeholders have raised concerns about the validity of the assumptions that drive FAA’s evacuation standards—and industry tests and simulations for certifying new aircraft—given that the standards have not been significantly updated since 1990. Significant changes in the industry and consumer behavior have occurred since 1990.”
For example, the number of aircraft seats and passengers have increased but seat size and distance between seats—known as seat pitch—has decreased. Passengers’ reliance on carry-on luggage has also increased.
In October 2016, American Airlines had to evacuate an aircraft due to an engine fire. Citing this incident, and the possibility of further reductions in seat pitch and increases in numbers of seats in commercial airliners, the Ranking Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Aviation have requested that we examine FAA’s evacuation standards and whether passengers can safely evacuate aircraft in emergencies within the required 90 seconds given these changes in the airline industry and consumer behavior.
Accordingly, our audit objectives will be to assess FAA’s (1) development and updating of aircraft emergency evacuation standards—including how changes in passenger behavior, passenger demographics, and seating capacity—affect the standards and (2) process for determining whether aircraft as currently configured meet evacuation standards.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who together with House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) requested the study, has previously said he doubts computer simulations can accurately predict how long it takes to evacuate a plane.
“As they jam more and more and more seats into these planes, I wonder if we’ve reached a point where we can no longer meet that standard,” he said in an April hearing.
The audit will examine how changes in passenger behavior, passenger demographics and seating capacity affect the FAA’s standards and how the FAA determines whether aircraft, as currently configured, meet those standards.
