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Times: Ryanair cabin crew struggles to open doors on burning plane
Ryanair cabin crew struggles to open doors on burning plane
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent The Times (London) 2 August 2004 Picture (diagram): http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/pic...,139153,00.jpg CABIN crew on Europe's largest budget airline struggled to open emergency exits during a fire because of inadequate training, a report by safety investigators says. Passengers began to panic on the Ryanair aircraft and there was "pushing and shoving" after the pilot ordered them to evacuate the aircraft. Airport staff at Stansted, Essex, had spotted flames shooting from the rear of the right engine on the Boeing 737 as it landed. The cabin crew smelt burning and saw smoke billowing from under the wing. Firecrew advised the pilot by radio to evacuate the aircraft's 115 passengers. But the pilot did not hear a second message a few seconds later telling him to make sure passengers did not use the doors on the right side where firefighters were tackling the burning engine. Cabin crew members at both the front and back of the aircraft tried to open the doors on the right side but found them too heavy. Greater force than usual is required to open an aircraft door in an emergency because the act of opening it automatically deploys an inflatable slide. The crew members, both believed to be female, had to call on male staff to help them to open the doors. An Air Accidents Investigation Branch report, published after a two-year inquiry into the incident, said that most of Ryanair's "new entrant cabin crew personnel" were not properly trained in opening exit doors. "The door opening forces which they encountered during training were considerably less than those that would be encountered in a real evacuation with an armed evacuation slide." They had been "advised" that the doors would be heavier but had not practised opening them in realistic emergency conditions. The investigators acknowledged that safety regulations covering the training of cabin crew left some ambiguity over how evacuation procedures were taught. But they said they had repeatedly advised airlines of the "importance of realistic door operation during evacuation training". The rules on aircraft evacuation were tightened after the Manchester airport disaster of 1985, in which 55 people died after failing to escape from a burning British Airways aircraft. That incident also began with a fire in an engine on a Boeing 737. In another similarity both pilots then began the evacuation with the fuselage downwind from the burning engine. This meant that the fire could be fanned by the wind towards the passengers. In the Manchester incident the firefighters were unable to contain the blaze and it spread very quickly to the fuselage. The report on the Stansted incident, which took place in February 2002, said: "Had the right engine developed an uncontained fire, the relative wind would have exacerbated the situation." That would have adversely affected the survival rates. About 40 passengers escaped from the Ryanair aircraft on the right side, towards the burning engine. Firefighters ordered six passengers who had jumped out on to the wing to get back inside the aircraft and exit on the other side. The report concluded that this had hindered the firefighting operation. Four passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation, which was completed in about 90 seconds. The investigators recommended that both the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), Ryanair's safety regulator, and the JAA, the European aviation safety body, should review cabin crew training. A Ryanair spokeswoman said: "If the IAA and the JAA modify existing procedures on the back of this recommendation, we will, of course, like all other airlines, implement new modifications fully." COST CUTTING * Ryanair saves money by contracting out cabin crew training to centres across Europe, including in Poland and Latvia * The company forces applicants to pay for the course and all their travel and accommodation expenses, at a total cost of about £2,000 * Cabin crew are also required to pay for their uniforms, medical examinations and airport identity cards * Ryanair claims it does accept cabin crew trained in Britain, but states on its website: "At present Ryanair do not recruit from any training schools in the UK" * http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...199379,00.html |
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