Yet another aviation thread.

Quote: Pacomartin

The very obvious objection is the FAA rules on maximum number of passengers that can safely evacuate in 90 seconds. They are retrofitting only A330 which has an internal staircase. If you add a handful of passengers in a conference room or in sleeping quarters they can get up the stairs, but if you add 50 passengers in regular chairs, they will overload the stairway.

Not to mention in most cases passengers sleeping downstairs will have time to move to their seats upstairs, probably. Few accidents are sudden, and few of those are survivable in any case (like mid-air collisions).

But if airlines decide to use the belowdecks area for passengers, they'll put seats in, not bed (unless it's premium class beds for premium passengers). This would require redesigning and rebuilding part of the lower fuselage to accommodate emergency exits. I'm aware cargo doors can't just be used that way, and that would require spending money.

So we're back to: beds in the cargo spaces for economy passengers won't ever happen.

Quote: Nareed

Not to mention in most cases passengers sleeping downstairs will have time to move to their seats upstairs, probably. Few accidents are sudden, and few of those are survivable in any case (like mid-air collisions).

But if airlines decide to use the belowdecks area for passengers, they'll put seats in, not bed (unless it's premium class beds for premium passengers). This would require redesigning and rebuilding part of the lower fuselage to accommodate emergency exits. I'm aware cargo doors can't just be used that way, and that would require spending money.

So we're back to: beds in the cargo spaces for economy passengers won't ever happen.

I have never looked, are there emergency exits on the upper deck of the A380? I would assume so.

Quote: DRich

I have never looked, are there emergency exits on the upper deck of the A380? I would assume so.

How topical!

Indeed the A380 has emergency exits, with longer slides, in the upper deck (so does the 747, BTW).

The topical part is that Qantas plans to block some upper deck exits in its A380s in order to add seats. Now, I assume they can get away with this because they may still have more exits than necessary.

Quote: DRich

I have never looked, are there emergency exits on the upper deck of the A380? I would assume so.

Of course.

The FAA has determined that the largest number of people that can go through a pair of full size doors (Type A) in ninety seconds is 110 people.
Type A is a floor-level exit with a rectangular opening of not less than 42 inches wide by 72 inches high, with corner radii not greater than seven inches.

So the maximum seating on a B777-300 and B777-300ER is 550, and on an B777-200, B777-200ER, B777-200LR, B787-10, A330-300 and an A330-900 is 440 seats.

For 747-400 the total passenger capacity is limited to: 660 passengers with 5 pair of Type "A" exits on main deck plus one pair of Type "A" exits on the upper deck.

On an A380 it was 538 on the main deck and 315 on the upper deck for a total of 853, but I believe they raised the lower deck limit. The implication is 5*110=550 doors on main level and 3*110 passengers on the upper level. But I know they had to do a real test with actual people on 26th March 2006, so they may have cut out a few people (12 on lower deck and 15 on upper deck) just to guarantee that they would meet the 90 seconds.

==============================
Sometimes the manufacturing substitutes a smaller door with more restrictive limits and the exit limit is not a simple multiple of 110.
Type A 110
Type B 75
Type C 55
Type A is a floor-level exit with a rectangular opening of not less than 42 inches wide by 72 inches high, with corner radii not greater than seven inches.
Type B is a floor-level exit with a rectangular opening of not less than 32 inches wide by 72 inches high, with corner radii not greater than six inches.
Type C type is a floor-level exit with a rectangular opening of not less than 30 inches wide by 48 inches high, with corner radii not greater than 10 inches.


Type I 45
Type II 40
Type III 35
Type IV 9
(1)Type I is a floor-level exit with a rectangular opening of not less than 24 inches wide by 48 inches high, with corner radii not greater than eight inches.
(2)Type II is a rectangular opening of not less than 20 inches wide by 44 inches high, with corner radii not greater than seven inches. Type II exits must be floor-level exits unless located over the wing, in which case they must not have a step-up inside the airplane of more than 10 inches nor a step-down outside the airplane of more than 17 inches.
(3)Type III is a rectangular opening of not less than 20 inches wide by 36 inches high with corner radii not greater than seven inches, and with a step-up inside the airplane of not more than 20 inches. If the exit is located over the wing, the step-down outside the airplane may not exceed 27 inches.
(4)Type IV is a rectangular opening of not less than 19 inches wide by 26 inches high, with corner radii not greater than 6.3 inches, located over the wing, with a step-up inside the airplane of not more than 29 inches and a step-down outside the airplane of not more than 36 inches.

I think there are other restrictions based on intermediate spacing as the exit limit in some cases does not add up.

Maximum Passengers B767:
255 (767-200) with 2 pairs of Type A plus 1 pair of Type III exits. (2*110+35=255)
290 (767-200/300) with 2 pairs of Type A plus 2 pairs of Type III exits. (2*110+2*35=290)
290 (767-300) with 3 pairs of Type A plus 1 pair of Type III exits.
351 (767-300) with 3 pairs of Type A plus 1 pair of Type I exits.
375 (767-400ER )with 3 pairs of Type A plus 1 pair of Type I exits. (3*110+45=375)

Delta B767-300 with smaller doors


A B757-200
219 (Four pair of Type I exits)
224 (Three pair of Type I exits plus two pair of Type III exits)
239 (Three pair of Type I exits plus one pair of improved Type I exits at Door No. 2).

A B757-300
275 (Three pair of Type C exits, one pair of Type I exits and two pair of Type III exits).
295 (Two pair of Type C exits, one pair of Type B exits, one pair of Type I exits, and two pair of Type III exits).

Condor Flugdienst flies their B757-300 with 275 seats for the most number of seats on a single aisle jet.

Seating on the A330-200 and A330-800 is limited to 406 which would seem to be 3*110+75=405, but I don't know where the other seat comes from.

But the "FAA exit limit" is in most cases impossible to seat comfortably even in an all economy class configuration. Only JAL puts 500 seats in a B777-300ER.

The seating limit on the new B777-8 and B777-9 has not been set yet, but I think it will be 475 (instead of 550). Perhaps no one has shown an interest in an all-economy configuration.

Av-speak: Southwest 737 suffers an uncontained engine failure.

Regular English: Engine blows up on Southwest flight.

So an engine on a Southwest flight blew up. Shrapnel damaged the plane, including taking out a window a few rows behind the engine. A passenger was almost sucked out of the plane, and conflicting reports hint she may the passenger who died later, possibly at a hospital.

In days to come, we'll hear a lot in the aviation press about wearing seat belts, the proper placement of emergency oxygen masks, and evacuating the plane with your carry on luggage.

Right now everyone is marveling how lucky the passengers and crew were.

To that I say: B****t.

The lucky people that day where the thousands upon thousands passengers in every other plane whose engines didn't blow up.

Quote: Nareed

So an engine on a Southwest flight blew up. Shrapnel damaged the plane, including taking out a window a few rows behind the engine. A passenger was almost sucked out of the plane, and conflicting reports hint she may the passenger who died later, possibly at a hospital.

It was confirmed that she was the one sucked into the window. Reports have passengers performing CPR on her in the plane so I would assume she was already dead. My guess is she took shrapnel to the head that was fatal. I haven't heard any reports saying if she was dead or alive when she was partly out the window.

Quote: DRich

It was confirmed that she was the one sucked into the window. Reports have passengers performing CPR on her in the plane so I would assume she was already dead. My guess is she took shrapnel to the head that was fatal. I haven't heard any reports saying if she was dead or alive when she was partly out the window.

Thanks.

I usually wait a few days for the reports to be sorted out.

Quote: Nareed

Av-speak: Southwest 737 suffers an uncontained engine failure.

Regular English: Engine blows up on Southwest flight.

We would prefer "uncontained engine failure" or even better "uncontained compressor fan failure", "failure of structural integrity" and "explosive decompression" etc.

CPR on plane and defribilator on ground.

Debris may indeed have traveled thru both outer and inner shells and struck her. With all those oxygen masks did someone inhale and then place it over her?

AP:Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s

Quote: Nareed

Av-speak: Southwest 737 suffers an uncontained engine failure.

Regular English: Engine blows up on Southwest flight.

We would prefer "uncontained engine failure" or even better "uncontained compressor fan failure", "failure of structural integrity" and "explosive decompression" etc.

CPR on plane and defribilator on ground.

Debris may indeed have traveled thru both outer and inner shells and struck her. With all those oxygen masks did someone inhale and then place it over her?

AP:Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s

Interesting facts about the Southwest incident:

It was the first fatality on a Southwest flight, and only the second involving Southwest (I'm looking for details on that).

This incident is the first fatality on a commercial airliner in the US since 2009, when the now infamous Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed. (Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407)

It's also the second "uncontained engine failure" on a Southwest 737 in a short interval.