The Great Escape

As of this writing, there have been no fatal accidents involving U.S. commercial jetliners in nearly four years. Emergency evacuations, however, are common and can be surprisingly dangerous. Government data show that aircraft evacuations occur at U.S. airports about once every 11 or 12 days, and a search of federal accident databases conducted for Condé Nast Traveler turned up some 200 emergency evacuations, involving at least 5,000 people, from mid-1997 through mid-2005. The incidents were attributed to a wide range of causes, including onboard fires, engine trouble, landing gear glitches, and false alarms. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) study of 46 aircraft evacuations that was released in 2000 found that more than 100 passengers were injured—many of them seriously—in evacuations during an 18-month period. Injuries were caused when, for example, slides inflated inside the cabin or carry-on bags were heedlessly tossed down the emergency chutes. Still more alarming: A Condé Nast Traveler analysis of the most serious survivable accidents from 1983 through 2000 showed that roughly 30 percent of those who died had survived the crash itself only to perish during the evacuation. In other words, passengers who should have walked away from those accidents died for reasons that were preventable, such as unclear commands from the crew, pileups at exit doors, and passengers' unfamiliarity with evacuation procedures.

As successful as the Air France evacuation appeared to the rest of the world, many of those working to improve air-crash survivability saw it as evidence of how much progress has yet to be made: Slides didn't open properly on at least two of the plane's eight exits (two others were blocked by fire), forcing some passengers to jump off the wreckage from heights of up to ten feet. As a result, two crew members and nine passengers suffered serious injuries, including broken limbs and spinal fractures. "We've been urging the airlines for years to check their equipment more frequently," says Nora Marshall, an accident investigator and expert in air-crash survival at the NTSB. "We should not have to wait for an emergency to find out there's a problem."

Aviation-safety experts say that further improvements in cabin design and evacuation protocol need to be made, especially as we enter an era of larger and more crowded planes. The following are among the problems they cite:

• The emergency slides failed in 37 percent of the evacuations studied by the NTSB, but recommended improvements to the maintenance of these systems have been put on hold by the FAA and the airlines.
• Since 1988, the FAA has required that new aircraft be equipped with seats capable of withstanding an impact of 16 g's (or 16 times the force of gravity). But the less sturdy 9-g seats remain in service on older jets and are still being manufactured, because they can be used on plane types certified before the current requirement took effect.
• Evacuations continue to be hampered by passengers' ignorance of basic safety procedures. Airlines are not required to personally brief those seated in exit rows on how to open escape hatches, which are often heavy and cumbersome to operate, and they have resisted calls by the FAA and the NTSB to hold full-scale evacuation drills for crew members. Indeed, few flight attendants have ever participated in one.