Crash Survival

Employees, Passengers Should Make Safety Their First Priority

March 10, 1991|By Betsy Wade, New York Times News Service.

Every airplane crash that is classified as ``survivable`` has a lesson for future passengers as well as the airline industry.




An obvious example is the attendants` standard opening, along these lines, ``While we are here to assure a comfortable and enjoyable flight for you, we do have concerns for your safety, too``: Safety, in other words, is subordinate to providing food, drink, blankets, pillows and magazines.

Yet from the standpoint of flight employees` training and their real duties, safety comes first, second and third.



Rules say 90 seconds


People do not absorb readily how much personal initiative will be required for survival if they live through the impact.



The more frequently passengers had traveled in the previous year, the less likely they were to have looked at the card. However, two-thirds of the passengers felt confident that, without help, they could open the exits in the event of an evacuation.

Of these people, 56 percent said they had learned how to open the exits by reading the instructions on the doors, but Kelly reported that because it was unlikely that 179 people had had a chance to inspect the doors on the flights they just left, they probably were basing their assumptions on an earlier flight.

Perhaps the most dismaying statistic was that 91 percent of those interviewed said that the amount of safety information provided on the plane was ``just about right.``


The fourth passenger, seated directly next to the exit, who has not talked with the investigators, did not move to open the door, which was released by a passenger from another row.

Exit-row restrictions

The new Federal Aviation Administraton exit-row rule sharply restricts who may be assigned to these seats: Children, the blind, the disabled, the deaf and others, including people who do not speak English, may not sit there. The new safety-briefing cards reiterate the exit-row rules and are supposed to reinforce the message that if a passenger does not want to carry out the required duties in an emergency, he or she should ask for another seat. Some airlines have a separate briefing card for the exit row; some present it as part of the regular printed briefing.

At USAir, Nancy E. Vaughan, a spokeswoman, said that flight attendants are expected to go to the exit row and ``visually assess`` the people there. This often involves giving the briefing orally to the row.

