<p>As far as the slides, well, I’d like to see the data on what percentage of slides actually even open when deployed. It might be a scarily small number. Of course you should not bring your carryon with you, as when you multiply that by 200+ people, it makes it more difficult to get out quickly if everyone is carrying something. But I can see why someone might feel compelled to grab their precious bag, even knowing better.</p>
<p>In one specific aircraft accident I’m thinking of (no names mentioned, but a complete hull loss), the only people on board were the pilots flying and jumpseating. Neither of the slides deployed, so everyone had to escape through the cockpit windows. While they were waiting for the people in front of them to go, they started throwing the crew bags out of the entry doors (that the slides didn’t deploy out of). They really couldn’t do anything else but wait. Someone watching the incident videotaped it, the crew throwing the bags out while the airplane was on fire…the company was not pleased!</p>
<p>In the test I watched people stepping out instead of jumping caused the slide to collapse. It was pretty scary just watching. The slide went vertical.<br>
I imagine it would be much worse if everyone was rolling a suitcase onto the tenuous inflated slide. They are made for an emergency…jump, slide, roll, run. I guess the airlines can’t exactly require you to understand that.<br>
Well, they could, but since air travel is so safe nobody is going to pay extra for the safest…</p>
<p>A big problem dragonmom, is that often they don’t even inflate in the first place. Or the wind whips them to the side so they are unusable. Of course, if the airplane’s on fire, then people will just jump out wherever and however they can.</p>
<p>Well, am nixing the Scottevest. D and I went to the mall to try on. It was heavy and not at all flattering–made for someone with different dimensions than mine. Will stick with my fleece vests with zippers and soft carry on le sport sac bags and soft backpacks. Thanks for the heads up on not taking rollerbags on inflation slide. Good points raised.</p>
<p>busdriver, you said that maybe the pilots weren’t looking at their instruments because they were looking outside (#94). But it seems to me that would have been a big clue that something was very wrong. At any rate, passengers noticed that something was really off. I simply can’t understand why no one in the cockpit noticed what both their instruments and their eyeballs were telling them.</p>
<p>That would be very upsetting, if passengers noticed a problem with the landing and the pilots were either not noticing or unable to correct. Hopefully the full story will make much more sense.</p>
<p>LasMa…Landing an aircraft is always a combination of instrument and visual cues. How much you focus on one versus the other is dependent on many factors, including the weather conditions, availability of instrument approaches, other air traffic, terrain or other obstructions, etc. Unless you have a complete failure of all your instrumentation (an incredibly rare occurrence) a pilot should never completely abandon that set of cues. A failure of one instrument (airspeed for example) can be very tricky, especially if it’s providing incorrect info as opposed to no info, but we’re trained to incorporate info from all the various sources and make sure it all jives. These aircraft all have multiple redundancy for all instrumentation in the event a primary system malfunctions, so they SHOULD have had information available to them through backup sources. Obviously, somewhere during this landing and for some reason not yet known this process failed.</p>
<p>Like busdriver, I’m surprised the NTSB is releasing information as quickly as they are since they normally like to have as many bases covered as possible before releasing statements with any specifics. Everything they’ve released so far is certainly funneling everyone towards pilot error, but whether or not there were other additional factors involved remains to be seen.</p>
<p>I’ve seen ads for them in some online catalogs by a few department stores but you get much more variety and choices online. They also run discounts from time to time if you sign up on the site.</p>
<p>BTW, I wear my Scott E Vest everyday to and from work from about early spring to late fall. I just layer a fleece under it when it is a little cooler and a shell over it when it’s raining.</p>
<p>I think you just sold me on that E Vest thing, BCE. Gonna sign up for their list now and wait for a sale to happen. Whenever I travel or, well, go anywhere with my girlfriend, I tend to wind up carrying both of our stuff. That would be a much better looking solution for me to carry two wallets, phones, and sets of keys versus cargo pants every day.</p>
<p>I would never wear a vest like that. It looks heavy and hot.
I also would never remember where my keys were.
For the same price I could buy a cute handbag. Or two.</p>
<p>The lower right slash pocket has a little device that attaches to your key ring that’s held by a spiral elastic cord. The lower pockets have magnetic closures in addition to zip closures so that it helps to prevent things from falling out while still being accessible. They also make it harder for pickpockets.</p>
<p>There’s a ScottEVest promo ad displayed right now while I’m logged in at CC–10% off. I’ve lost a couple of sweaters during travel. I left it hanging on a chair and in a taxicab. I’ve never lost my purse though.</p>
<p>I bought two scottevest when they first introduced the ladies’ vests. They have horrible quality control issues and their customer care is non-existent. I would not buy any of their products again.</p>
<p>Wolvervine, do you have any guesses as to why four pilots would have not noticed that they were descending too slow and too low? I’m starting to think they must have been on something to have not paid attention to that.</p>
