We have WiFi on board. And we have laptops in the cockpit. Hooking the two together is 100% verboten.
One of my favorite stories from the good old days:
I *hate it *when that happens.
Pfft. He’s doing it now.
I gather that the OP is basically asking if there could ever be a time on an airliner where John Jacob Astor, upon learning of his probable fate, could say, “We’re dressed in our Sunday best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen. I would like another drink though!” and the answer is no.
For one thing an airliner in distress is often a chaotic situation. The worst single-plane disaster, JAL 123, flew out of control for over 30 mins before finally crashing. However all that time was spent going thru repeated climbs & dives (porpoising) so there wasn’t much opportunity to sip cocktails with a look of bemused resignation.
But more importantly, an airliner emergency is literally a second by second affair. The best case for your scenario I can think of would be the Sioux City crash where the plane lost all hydraulics (just as JAL 123 did) but was still able to fly reasonably straight & level all the way to the airport The Captain told the passengers their situation was serious but not hopeless. And here’s the thing: He wasn’t just sparing their feelings, he himself *believed *it wasn’t hopeless because, well, that’s what pilots do. Until you’re moments from augering-in you simply work the problem as best you can. IOW the only time an airliner has a definitive ‘we’re all gonna die’ vibe to it is literally moments before you crash.
The only other situation I can think of was what the passengers on United 93 went thru, and I don’t wanna think about that. Besides, you can see what they ended up doing.
Nah, like Dennis Miller said, the first class cabin just breaks off into a Goldfinger mini-plane and lands safely!
Been there done that (not a crash but a fuel dump). We were an hour into Iranian airspace then had to turn back to Kuwait, at which destination we jettisoned fuel and were met by a fire truck. During the entire return leg we weren’t allowed even to leave our seats to use the toilet, let alone enjoy a tasty beverage.
What is interesting is that people who have been drinking have been show to be more crash worthy (less prone to serious injury) so in a strange way it might be helpful and even limit liability to serve drinks in this situation.
I heard an interesting story recently. A relative works in the same place they test aircraft evacuation procedures. They mock up the plane and fill it with (mostly) students. They get paid if they complete three evacuations, and a bonus if they are in the first 200 out of the plane (for motivation, obviously).
Recently, they tested the evacuation plan for the A380, doubledecker, more than two stories high on the top deck. For the first time, some of the participants refused to do a second attempt. They also had to add friction pads to the upper slides to slow evacuees down.
Si
I hope that is an upper-limit “failure” mode for evacuation. Flight personnel don’t want to encourage me-first trample-the-old-lady standards, right?
The point of paying extra for the people demonstrating an evacuation is to give them some motivation to hustle past the others. Just like it will happen in a real evac. That helps ensure the simulation is closer to being a valid one.
People shoving & trying to climb over each other hampers the total throughput of the evac while enhancing the odds a bit for the pushiest folks.
Said another way, we in the business don’t want a shoving match during an evac, but we know we’re gonna get one anyway. So our tests better account for that reality.
There are also several people in the test passenger load who are secretly pre-briefed to “faint” somwhere in the process. Or to get to the door & freeze in mock panic. Why? Because we know that’s gonna happen too in real life & we want the test data to reflect that.
My point exactly. Great minds, and all that…
Do they ever use smoke in the test evacuations?
Whoa, dude, this evacuation is like, totally, groovy.
Or was that not the type of smoke you had in mind?
I feel like I’m flying, man.
this thread shows how much a guy needs straight dope, because two friends in the airline business told me an emtpy tank with just fumes in it is far more explosive during a crash landing. you guys are saying otherwise?
Fuel, any fuel, can only burn when the mixture is just right. Too rich or too lean won’t burn. Or explode. The correct mixture tends to be lots of air and just a few percent fuel. This is why you can drop a lit match in a bucket of gasoline & nothing exciting happens. The liquid and the vapors just above the liquid are too rich to ignite.
So it’s true that an empty fuel tank is more able to explode than a nearly full one. Because the air in the empty tank might be at a lean enough mixture to burn, whereas the (nearly) full tank will have far too rich a mixture in the small headspace above the fuel.
BUT: The real risk in an accident is not intact tanks exploding. After all, that’d require an ignition source inside the tank before it ruptures. The real risk is tanks rupturing and spilling liquid fuel out into the open air. Which will, at some point, be lean enough to start a really big fire fed by the rest of the fuel. If the tanks get opened up at any kind of speed, the fuel is scattered all over the place, aerated to a lean enough mixture, & ignited to create quite the inferno. Ref NASA Testing a Plane - YouTube
For a long range flight, getting rid of 80+% of the potential inferno before landing is a good idea.
But wait, there’s more. the actual reason fuel is dumped in an emergency has just about zero to do with reducing the fire hazard.
It’s all about reducing the aircraft weight enough that it can land without breaking the landing gear on touchdown and also having enough braking power to stop by the end of the runway. And to ensure the landing speed is slow enough we don’t overspeed & shred tires. And finally, to ensure we have enough power to be able to make a go-around with an engine out if necessary.
These last 4 are the real reason(s) to dump fuel.
^
ah, and i thought this was going to be another rotten doping day for me. good on you mate!
This facility is in the UK. If you don’t pay people to push, they will queue quietly at the emergency exits, pass the time of day with their neighbours, spend several minutes saying “after you, my good sir”, “no sir, after you” to each other before jumping …
Si
I assume this is also true in actual emergency evacuations for the British.
That video was from a full-scale test of a polymer fuel additive that was supposed to prevent fuel misting (and thus reduce the likelihood of an inferno) during a crash. Unfortunately the test ended up being an absolute worst-case scenario, as a ground-mounted stanchion that was intended to tear the wing open actually tore into the right inboard engine (you can see this around 0:12). Although there may be crash circumstances where that additive could help, this particular scenario was one in which there was very little that could have prevented ignition.
In any event, as you’ve noted, the test shows quite clearly what happens when you crash with a lot of liquid fuel on board. The plane’s cabin was also loaded with crash test dummies; poke around on YouTube or elsewhere on the web, and you’ll find interesting videos of what they went through, including the very survivable impact and the very not-survivable post-crash fire.
Dude, I have, like, totally crashed.
Yes
I used to work for a company that rented special effects equipment and the airlines frequently rented smoke machines for test and training evacuations.
Although the smoke they produced was clean and nothing like the toxic acrid stuff you would find in a real world situation…still it simulated the obscured visibility.