Anyway

Tim poin­ted me at the video of the test run for evac­u­at­ing the A‑380 — it’s worth a look. I noticed, how­ever, that it was­n’t exactly a very real­ist­ic test. If you read the page rather than just leap­ing to the video, you’ll see the dis­cus­sion of an earli­er MD-11 test where a woman over the age of 45 tripped and fell; bear that in mind when you watch the A‑380 evac­u­ation video.

What struck me about the video was that the evac­u­ation was not only car­ried out in ideal con­di­tions, but the par­ti­cipants were also all ideal. All between the ages of roughly 20 and 45, all wear­ing com­fort­able trousers, none of them over­weight, none of them car­ry­ing or cajol­ing chil­dren or babies, none of them in wheel­chairs or con­nec­ted to oxy­gen sup­plies, none of them in high heels or flimsy dresses (or good suits, come to that). All were fit and able to jump on the slide without hes­it­a­tion. In a plane car­ry­ing over 850 people, what pro­por­tion will be in some way encumbered, and how big a dif­fer­ence does that make to the evacuation?

In a lot of ways the video reminded me of the films that are always being shot around Van­couver. One I saw being shot at Van­couver air­port had lots of extras tow­ing bags around pre­tend­ing to go some­where and looked unreal­ist­ic for the same reas­ons — no-one was over­weight, or eld­erly, or had babies or chil­dren, unlike every air­port I’ve been to recently.