I am presuming they await intructions from the flight deck. What if the flight deck crew are incapacitated on impact.
Do the flight attendants make the decision to evacuate? How do they know when to act if they hear nothing from the flight deck crew? Can they over ride orders from the flight deck or can they simply do what they feel is right at any given time in the interests of safety?
IAN M: I have never heard or seen such a ridiculous and naive answer on Yahoo Answers in the entire time I have had the pleasure of contributing here.
Thank goodness you don’t write safety manuals
LOL
Flight Deck is the cockpit.
If you don’t know what a flight deck is I am unsure you should even be attempting to answer the question
5 Comments
Get real
If the flight deck crew are incapacitated so are the flight attendants and most likely the passengers as well.
Ian M
Edit. To the asker. How do you plan to crash an aircraft that will incapacitate the flight deck crew yet leave the cabin staff intact. Like I said GET REAL.
January 8th, 2010 at 5:52 am. Permalink.
Who do you mean by “Flight deck crew”. People on the ground? I think the captain would let them know as problems occur. I would also think they have had a lot of training before hand on what to do in emergencies. If the plane has landed on it’s belly or in water; they might already know the need to evacuate would be ASAP.
January 8th, 2010 at 6:51 am. Permalink.
Nominally, the pilot in command will give an order to evacuate. However, if the airplane is on the ground and danger is immediate and obvious, nothing prevents flight attendants from also making that decision on their own. They can sort out the formal chain of command after everyone is safely off the aircraft. Nobody is likely to fault cabin crew for evacuating a burning aircraft without waiting for orders, but a cabin crew that waits for orders that do not come as passengers roast inside the aircraft is much more likely to be criticized.
In theory, the pilot in command is in a good position to know at what point evacuation should begin, and additionally he is legally in charge during the flight (although the situation changes once the aircraft is immobile on the ground).
January 8th, 2010 at 7:02 am. Permalink.
pilots will tell you
and from there sometimes you as flight attendants have to communicate with the people in the flight … sometimes flight attendants have to be really strong
January 8th, 2010 at 7:42 am. Permalink.
Good question. And you have a good head on your shoulders. You are basically correct.
I am a flight attendant and have been since 1998.
Flight attendants are to follow the instructions of the flight deck, but as you point out, they may be incapacitated…
For my airline, if anything happens like a known emergency or something totally unexpected we are to assess the situation for 30 seconds. (We are looking for smoke, fire, water, power lines, debris… anything you do not want to send people out into). If we do not need to evacuate the pilots will tell us if they can, within that time.
However if we hear nothing. And we deem the situation requires an evacuation, we are permitted to start it.
We are just required to use our best judgment…
January 8th, 2010 at 7:54 am. Permalink.