Still Concerned

Air Safety Week, March 19, 2001

Despite the Airbus Industrie response that all evacuation certification requirements will be met regarding the A380 Very Large Transport Aircraft (VLTA), safety experts at the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) are not assuaged (see ASW, March 5). AFA's Chris Witkowski offered a few comments by way of follow-up:

"Airbus said that communication over distance is addressed in the B777- 300, but that aircraft was not certified for evacuation with a full scale evacuation demonstration (FSD), and test data in which exit bypass was the procedure used for the analysis used to certify the B777-300. Analysis can't predict failure of the overall evacuation system.... As for the B747 upper deck, it is quite different than the A380 in terms of length and number of exits, seats and slight attendants.

"Airbus' plans to install a cabin intercommunications data system does not answer the question of how to effectively send and ensure receipt by all flight attendants of the usability of each exit, conditions (structural integrity, fire, debris, etc.) between those exits on each deck, outside the exits, and at the stairs between the decks. Even if this information was reliably available to each flight attendant (some type of exit availability indicator board at each flight attendant station), how do flight attendants coordinate their evacuation strategy between two full decks? "A full scale evacuation demonstration must be conducted for this aircraft type." >> Witkowski, e-mail Cwitkowski@afanet.org <<