I still haven't gotten a response to this question I posted on this thread:
""Those sitting in the upper tier of the twin-deck plane found themselves 26 feet off the ground, although emergency slides had been put in place before the exercise began."
Since when do real evacuations include pre-placed slides?!!? I don't recall Boeing ever being allowed to pre-place slides. It's supposed to be a test of the system, not just the moving of passengers.
I was afraid they were going to rig it. IIRC, the wings failed at less than 150% static. I'd like to see what the FAA does with this dinosaur.
there is no, and there never will be, a place i have to be bad enough, that i will EVER ride that POS!!!A Goodrich subsidiary designed and manufactured the slides in Phoenix. I work for another Goodrich subsidiary in San Diego. The President of the Phoenix operation is a friend of mine.
There are 16 slides on the aircraft. They made 8 of them inoperable. 3 of the remaining 8 were pre-deployed for some reason (my guess is that the upper slides were pre-deployed due to confinement reasons, but I don't know why). The other 5 deployed when activated, and the lights in the plane were shut off, leaving only emergency lights on.
This is a really impressive test - they have to evacuate 873 people in 90 seconds - that's better than 1.2 people were second on average. They did it in 80 seconds. There are always injuries in this test - a person actually died in another test on another aircraft.
When I first tead the headline I thought:
Oh good! It is now safe to evacuate the airbust.
I wish they had a test to see how quickly they can get everybody through Customs after they come out of this thing. That might add two hours to your flight time.