Flight Attendants' Union Challenges A380 Emergency Evacuation Plan

Air Safety Week, June 7, 2004

The emergency evacuation concept for the Airbus A380 double-deck airliner is "unrealistic and unacceptable," according to a new paper by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF).

The union federation represents most employment groups in aviation, including cabin crews working with airlines worldwide, and the paper is the latest expression of emergency evacuation concerns about the A380 from flight attendants and their union in recent years (see ASW, March 5, 2001, June 25, 2001). The A380, with 555 passengers in three-class configuration, will be the first fully double-deck airliner. The Boeing B747-400 features a partial upper deck, but the A380 will contain not just a couple dozen, but nearly 200 passengers on the upper deck.

Recent problems with emergency evacuations of B747-400 aircraft suggest that an evacuation involving many more upper-deck passengers presents not a problem of degree but of kind. The design of the A380 warrants a re-examination of current practices, the ITF paper contends. "The novel design of the A380, with two stacked high density seating platforms connected by two sets of stairways, will pose a number of new problems in the area of passenger management, communication, coordination and evacuation," the ITF paper asserts.

The A380 will feature 16 emergency door exits, six on the upper deck and 10 on the main deck. For emergency evacuation purposes, the manufacturer envisions two separate and independent evacuations, from the upper and main decks respectively, without reliance on the stairs.

The ITF finds "unrealistic and unacceptable" the concept of two separate evacuations for planning purposes and calls instead for a full-scale demonstration involving simultaneous evacuation of both decks. For one thing, passengers seeking to escape may be fearful of jumping onto upper deck slides some 25 feet above the ground. Airbus officials do not envision a greater tendency of passengers to "hesitate" before jumping onto the slides.

In response to the concerns raised in the ITF paper, Airbus said, "We've designed the A380 as a conventional transport aircraft, but it is one which also uses the latest technology and the accumulated experience of the industry, including lessons learned from previous accidents." Airbus noted that some B747s flying today with high-density seating configurations exceed the "normal" 555 passenger capacity of the A380 (the A380 in a single economy-class configuration will seat 853 passengers and the 16 door exits will accommodate this larger number).

Timothy Snyder, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and an expert in risk analysis at Fairfield University in Connecticut, is skeptical of the notion that the A380 is "like" other airliners, only bigger. Snyder also is a member of the Occupant Safety Issues Group of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC). "They're putting a third dimension on the airplane, that upper deck, and it represents a profound change for emergency evacuation," he said.

As an example, Snyder is not sanguine that the upper deck slide design will alleviate a tendency to hesitate. "If I can't see the whole pathway to the ground, it's not likely I'll be more willing to jump," he said. The slides, sources say, offer a view all the way to the ground.

Helmut Jungerman of the Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics at the Technical University Berlin, suggested in a 2002 paper on A380 evacuation that more passengers may sit down on the slide rather than jump, slowing the process.

As far as the non-use of stairs in an emergency evacuation, Snyder is openly skeptical. When the twin towers of the World Trade Center were on fire following the 9/11 attacks, Snyder recalled that the building occupants initially were told to stay in their offices, but many went to the stairways, anyway. And as the fires worsened, many people jumped to their deaths. "If people faced with smoke and fire will jump out of buildings, what will stop them from using the stairway on the A380?" Snyder asked.

ITF concerns fall into three main areas:

Cabin crew - number, training and competence. The ITF maintains that cabin staffing must accommodate the unusually large size of the A380, and the unprecedented number of passengers carried.

Moreover, according to the ITF paper, "Each cabin crewmember will need a fail-safe means of communication. Survivors of the [Oct. 31, 2000] Singapore Airlines [SIA] Flight SQ 006 crash [at Taipei, Taiwan] indict lack of crew communications as one of the factors that increased mortality." The airplane crashed attempting to take off at night on a closed runway in the heavy wind (gusts of more than 50 knots) and rain of an approaching typhoon. In the fiery crash, 83 of 179 passengers and crew on board were killed.

The ITF paper cites an analysis of the crash by Prof. Paul Blanchon, a passenger sitting in the rear of the SIA B747-400 who survived the crash. Blanchon wrote, "Up to 30 percent of passengers who died were prevented from escaping ... because cabin crew did not know which exits were viable escape routes and which were not. This was a significant factor in elevating the death toll." (ASW note: a detailed "survivors investigation" into the SQ 006 crash may be viewed at www.anycities.com/sq006/reconstruction.html; Blanchon's concerns also appeared in this publication, see ASW, June 3, 2002)