Original subtitles

It is every passenger's worst fear.

We were in the water, up to our knees and it was just freezing cold

But many people do live to tell the tale.

Absolutely, accidents are survivable

The key is knowing what to do...

And that is when you need to have your wits about you

I know, I have to figure out where the exit rows are

...and when to do it.

Because you never know,

it is right at the very last second that every thing happens.

GETTING OUT ALIVE Season 13, Episode 11

These are true stories.

They are based on official reports and eyewitness accounts.

July, 6th, 2013

Aircraft debris litters the main runway at San Francisco Intern'l Airport.

A burned out haul is all that is left of Asiana Airlines Flight 214

after a devastating crash landing.

Cell phone video captures the terrifying scene, moments after impact

The Asiana crew rushes to get passengers off the plane.

My brain was very clear and I planned what I had to do immediately.

Actually, I was not thinking but acting

As soon as I heard emergency escape, I conducted the evacuation.

In your mind it was like their training was flashing in front of them,

It just became second nature.

The Asiana evacuation is remarkably successful.

Of the 307 people on board, 304 make it out alive

Revealing a surprising truth about serious aviation accidents

If you are ever in one, chances are you will survive.

As a result of studies that have been done that at least 80% of the accidents are survivable

Barbara Dunn is an aviation safety consultant and former flight attendant.

We take our job very seriously, we take our safety roll very seriously.

If you asked any member of the cabin crew what their primary function on board was

they would tell you that it was a safety role.

But how do flight attendants master that role?

How do they become survival experts?

The answer is behind the doors of a facility that passengers rarely get to see.

According to my practice, the best training is a practical training.

That is why there is a cabin evacuation trainer of Airbus 320

Richard Kubelka is the chief cabin crew instructor at the Czech Airlines training CENTER in Prague.

It is one of only a few facilities in the industry that offers realistic cabin emergency training.

The cabin emergency trainer is not a real aircraft,

it is a mock up it is a model.

The 28 tonnes simulator has 2 emergency slides:

One at the forward door,

the other at the over-wing exit.

Inside, their are 40 seats with overhead bins and realistic lighting.

We can simulate all kinds of flights, a normal flight

or some non-standard situation.

Leading today’s session is cabin instructor Thomas Tjupeck

Tjupeck is preparing 11 young flight attendants for the worst.

All the practical scenarios have to be performed

We will play and save

They'll take turns being passengers and crew members

on a series of simulated disasters.

we are ready for fly I am pressing the START button

that means the engines are starting now.

From the control room at the back of the simulator Richard Kubelka initiates a scenario.

We are now taking off

The simulator's powerful hydraulic lift system comes to life.

The hydraulic system simulates the movement of the aircraft

so, we can shake the cabin during the training to simulate a real situation during the flight.

Please, fasten your seat-belts You are flying through turbulent area

In the cabin, it looks, feels, and sounds exactly like a real flight

The training has to be as realistic as possible

in order to prepare you for anything that might happen on the aircraft.

I press the LANDING button, hence we are landing now

Nobody knows that something will happen in a few minutes

It is also called the unprepared emergency situation

The most of our accidents take place during take off or landing

and they are unprepared, you don't know it is going to happen.

Often, passengers are burying themselves in a newspaper or a book,

some of them go to sleep

and that is when you need to have your wits about you.

In August, 2005, the cabin crew of Air France Flight 358

needed not only their wits,

but nerves of steel

Their A-340 descends through heavy wind and pounding rain

to Toronto's Pearson Intern'l Airport.

The pilots struggle to put the plane on the runway.

This landing was more intense and harder than anytime I've ever landed

The bumpiness of the landing would have caught everybody's attention

The fact that they were landing in a bad storm would have heightened the awareness.

It was a very difficult landing, everyone started clapping

and even a lady who was sitting next to me said:

Wow, that was an amazing landing.

As soon as she finished that sentence, all hell broke loose.

The plane started violently going up and down.

Then, as it speeds down the runway at 148 km/hr

Flight 358 runs out of room.

At that point, I believed that we are all going to die

It was obvious that no one can survive this thing.

I thought: That was it.

As the smell of jet-fuel fills the cabin, panic begins to spread.

The plane is now a deadly fire-trap.

The fire started in the aft-end of the aircraft

People in the front didn't realize the severity of this situation.

So, the people in the front were not as motivated to get out as quickly,

until there was an announcement made by one of the crew-members in the back-end.

She motivated people to get moving and get out.

In an instant, the flight attendant Deminor is gone

We are trained to be forceable

And we are trained to completely forget about the service-aspect of our job

and focus just on safety.

People were crawling over the seats they were pushing each other

They basically all for themselves

If they cannot control the panic...

...the crush of frightened passengers could quickly turn into a deadly stampede.

297 passengers are in a desparate struggle

to escape the burning wreckage of Air France Flight 358

Everybody was expecting the plane to blow up.

Some haven't taken any of the simple precautions safety experts recommend.

Making sure that you wear lace up shoes

and not a shoe that is going to fly off on impact and leave you barefoot.

Wearing natural fibres that don't burn as easily,

something that is made out of polyester or nylon or synthetic fabric of some description

When it gets hot and it melts, it sticks to my skin

So, if I am wearing cotton or wool or a natural fibre,

my chances of getting burned are far less

I could see the air-attendant there

struggling with the fact that: Should I or should I not open this door

because the fire was raging in front of it.

The attendant quickly makes the decision to start sending passengers down the emergency slides

We just ran up, as fast as we could

thorns, through whatever is left on the ground where the plane was

Astonishingly, every single passenger and the entire crew of Flight 358

make it out alive

In their report, the NTSB praised the crew very highly for the job that they did

attributed the fact that everybody got out to the actions of the cabin crew

We really need to take seriously those safety commands, evacuation, information

because you never know:

It was a perfect flight

there is not any indications that anything can go wrong

It is right at the very last second that everything happens.

The success of the Air France evacuation had everything to do with speed:

It took just 90 seconds to get everyone off the plane.

That amazingly short length of time is in fact the target that all crews aimed for.

Any moment now, the Czech Airlines trainees will be up against that clock.

So, the cabin must be clear in 1'30''.

The hydraulic lift rocks the cabin, simulating a hard emergency landing.

Evacuate, evacuate

Seat-belts off

Seatbelts off, leave everything

The evacuation commands are designed to get people up

and moving and towards the exit and out of the airplane

The slide on this simulator is already extended

so, to keep the timing realistic,

flight attendants must wait until they hear the sound of the slide being inflated

jump and slide...

The crew commands to cross you hands when you are sliding to protect yourself.

We do what is called looping, we repeat over and over again

until we are sure that everybody who can get out, is out

The looping helps combat a psychological phenomena known in the industry as negative panic

That's when people freeze in their seats and they don't want to move.

Instead of getting out and rushing towards an exit

they just sit there and wait for somebody to tell them what to do.

Research video has shown that while some passengers freeze...

...others will do almost anything to get off the plane as quickly as possible.

A famous study by the UK Civil Aviation Authority reveal that desperation and outright panic

can take hold in seconds

even in a simulated emergency.

Evacuation training teaches flight attendants how to quell that kind of panic:

By playing the role of the passenger

they get at least some idea of how frightening a real emergency would be.

This simulator is state of the art technology to train the future cabin crews

If in real life something happens, you really know what to do.

But what happens when disaster strikes in mid-air?

Getting off a plane at cruising altitude is not an option

One harrowing flight from Alaska reveals why cabin crews have only seconds

to react to explosive decompression.

The low atmospheric pressure outside the cabin poses a risk:

our bodies are simply not designed for such extreme altitudes

Normally, the aircraft protects us.

Today, the A-320 simulator will show what happens when that protection fails.

The next topic is the rapid compression.

When the oxygen masks are dropping down you have to use them immediately

The passenger's cabin is pressurized so that means that at cruising altitude

there is a higher pressure inside the cabin than outside

We are climbing to cruising altitude

Any breach in the fuselage at cruising altitude causes an instant depressurization

leading to a scene that would and look and sound something like this

Something happens

Take the masks and use them

It could be caused by a window, blowing out

and you could have a door, opening

It could be caused by a propeller, coming through the fuselage

There is any number of reasons that could cause it but it is a rapid loss of cabin pressure.

Oxygen masks are critical:

as most of the air in the cabin, it is sucked out by difference in pressure

Above the heads of the passengers, there is a chemical generator.

If it pulled down any mask is connected to the chemical generator

The generator will start and produces 100% oxygen for approx 12..14 minutes

If all goes well, 15 minutes of oxygen buys the pilots enough time

to descend to an altitude where the masks are no longer needed.

For us, it is important to know the shock and the masks are falling down

and to react to put it on try to give the information to the passengers

Pull the masks down and use them

Rapid decompression emergencies are extremely rare

affecting less than 1/1000,000 commercial flights

In June, 1983, Reeve Aleutian Flight 8 became one of those rare flights

10 passengers are flying from Cold Bay, Alaska

we were headed to Seattle

It was a beautiful day, it was clear, no turbulence

highly unusual...

In the cockpit, Captain James Gibson and his crew have noticed something unusual as well

Not with the weather, but with their plane

Do you hear that, Gary

I do I am not sure

I noticed that the vibration that I was feeling in my feet

and the vibration that was in the glass was different

And that's the first time I had ever come across that

Please have a look, will you

As Gibson and Gary Lintner wait for Moose Laurin to report back

the vibrations become more pronounced.

I did look up and down seeing my control yoke, shaking

I turned to James and I said: Jesus, look at this

James and I were looking to each other across the cockpit

and finally he says: Screw this, let's turn around

The engineer said: I want you to come back and check the #4 engine to see if you can see anything

And just as I looked out the window, the engine went

As the prop came off, I thought: Holy crap

It is going to kill me It is going to cut me in two

but, it flew forward and then, it came back

and slapped the engine it went underneath

The propeller tears a hole in the bottom of the plane

Things were start to fly around

Anything that wasn't tightened down would be heading towards the hole in the fuselage

disappearing very quickly

I grabbed to hold the cargo-net and looked down at my foot

My heart dropped to my feet

Fear just ran through me.

I looked straight down with my foot over a hole

Straight down over the ocean

I can actually to this day see the ocean, that view

The colour, the white caps

The hole is more than 0.5 meter wide

That scared the crap on me

The gash in the fuselage has caused an explosive decompression.

That caused the cockpit to get all foggy

There is almost no sound, your ear drum will pop

So, when you try to breath you end up getting light headed

and you can actually pass out

It is a little dis-concerning because the fog and it is quiet

You think: Jesus, am I dead, or not?

Depending on what altitude you are at depending on how explosive the decompression is

you may have slightly longer than at other times

but you will eventually die from lack of oxygen.

Junior flight attendant Victoria Fredenhagen springs into action.

After the explosions I wasn't sure of what had happened

I grabbed the oxygen walk-around bottle put that on

Jim and I got our mask on

and within seconds, Moose came to the cockpit door and said

Holy crap, we just lost #4 propeller

The rupture in the fuselage has damaged critical flight controls

The crew needs to descend to a lower altitude where there is more oxygen

but the yoke is slow to respond.

It felt like the yoke was in concrete

It just felt solid as a concrete block.

Calm down, just a second

Jim saw that the AUTOPILOT DISCONNECT lights were ON

and he reached over and turned the AUTOPILOT back on again

that was probably one of the smartest things that anybody ever did

The AUTOPILOT can do what the pilots could not:

Steer the plane

We're descending to 10,000 ft

It's a struggle, but they finally get their Electra L188 down to 10,000 ft

Okay, stable?

Thank God

The passengers are no longer in danger of hypoxia.

It is now safe to remove your masks.

There was no real emergency, because we could sense that everything was good.

Everybody fine back here?

there is of course adrenaline running at that point

It just felt good

I think it was surreal, because we were okay

Reeve Aleution makes it to safety

The close call is a good example of to do their role all cabin crews play

When you become a flight attendant,

you perform a balancing act every time you go to work

because the passengers look at you as a service provider

which is what you are, you are supposed to be gracious and kind and helpful

and yet, lurking in the background is always the fact that something might happen

and you may have to introduce your safety skills

At the Czech Airlines Training CENTER...

just we will practice the most complicated case, firefighting during the inflight service

...the team of young flight attendants is ready to test

what may be the most crucial safety skill of all:

Fighting fire

Fire is very frightening on an airplane because there is no way to go

If you have a house fire you can go outside, you can get away from the fire

You can't do that on an airplane

And you can't call the fire department

The cabin crew must respond in seconds or face an unstoppable inferno.

The A-320 simulator

Service is in progress, a wonderful meal today

Meal-service training is about to get a lot more exiting

thanks to an automated smoke generator

We can simulate the inflight fire, using smoke in the cabin

We can chose the place, e.g. inside the lavatory

inside the galley, under the seat or in the overhead compartment.

As wisps of smoke start to appear in the cabin...

...the crew springs into action,

clearing the isle and grabbing the protective smoke-hood and fire extinguisher

that are stored on all A-320s

It is very important to start the corporation between cabin attendants and flight crew members

Let's say that the first cabin attendant will start fire fighting procedures

the second cabin attendant will call the flight crew members

Captain, there is a fire in the cabin

and the other cabin attendant will take care about passengers

to get them to breath through something

so that you are filtering some of the smoke and toxic particles out.

The experience inside is very realistic

It is very difficult to orientate in the smoke in the cabin

and see people around and try to extinguish the fire

If putting out a simulated fire in a simulated plane is difficult

imagine facing the real thing at 30,000 ft.

June, 1983

All is not well aboard Air Canada Flight 797

The Air Canada DC-9 was a watershed accident

41 passengers are beginning to suffocate.

The aircraft was at cruise altitude

and there was smoke discovered, coming from one of the rear washrooms.

The smoke is getting thicker, but the crew can't find the source

incredibly dirty smoke that was really irritating your throat

You had to take really small bites of breath otherwise you would choke

I was crying and scared, I wasn't hysterical

The gentleman who was sitting next to me explained to me that

if I would not cry, and if I would not breath so fast

that it would conserve the oxygen

and not worry that the flight-attendants they know how to handle these sort of situations.

The crew may lack the more advanced fire training of today's crews

but the Flight 797's attendants know to hand out wet towels

to help filter the smoke.

There is no ventilation, or little ventilation

and you cannot open a window or a door to let the smoke out.

In the cockpit, the pilots have managed to re-route the flight

and they are preparing for an emergency landing in Cincinnati.

In 1983,

it is not standard procedure to instruct passengers how to open the emergency doors

but in this case, the flight attendants take the initiative.

From the time that the smoke was discovered until the aircraft touched down in Cincinnati

I believe was 17 minutes,

which was pretty remarkable when you consider that they had to find an airport to land in

When we touched the ground, I assumed that we are more safe now.

Now, let's get out of this airplane

But then, smoke is filling the cabin

Getting off the aircraft suddenly seems more difficult than any one could have imagined

I had to get out of my seat

and I remember putting my hands up on someone's neck

and it was like waiting in a line

and I knew that was one line, I didn't want to wait very long.

Sergio Bennetti swings open a cabin door of the smoke filled Air Canada DC-9

He helps gasping passengers escape.

Passengers struggle to find their way out, even with the doors open.

the exits are all but invisible the smoke is too thick.

I saw a light

It was the door that had opened, someone had opened the door

ran to the door and I just put my face out so that I could breath

Passengers who have found the exits slide of the wing and stumble to safety.

On the ground, flight attendants direct passengers out of harm's way

Get off the way...

Fire rescue vehicles surround the plane

Before everyone can get off...

...the entire cabin ignites

Something called FLASH OVER occurred

which is what happens when the fire builds up

and then the oxygen comes in from the outside.

Captain Donald Cameron and First Officer Claude Ouimet make it off

We knew there were people in the airplane unfortunately at that point

The cabin fire breaks through the top of the fuselage

Black smoke can be seen for kilometres

Flight attendant Laura Kayama begins to count.

I will remember these words forever

She told us to line up, so that she could count the survivors

If there were survivors, obviously there were dead.

There were 46 people on boarding incl. the crew and 20 people didn’t make it out

It is just a shame we didn’t get everybody off,

it still bothers me.

When the fire department and the investigators went into the aircraft afterwards

they found passengers on their hands and knees

Aft of the over-wing exits, facing aft

So, clearly they had crawled back there, looking for exits...

...and didn’t find them.

Maybe because they didn’t know where they were

And in those days, they weren’t marked well.

You need to have a rough idea how many feet it is to your nearest exit and to an alternate exit

And how you are going to get there if the cabin is full of smoke

You just need to be aware.

The tragedy of Air Canada Flight 797

leads to significant safety improvements in the airline industry.

We’ve got floor level lighting

We got automatic fire extinguishers in the washrooms

We’ve got huge improvements in flight attendant training in firefighting.

The cabin crew’s impromptu to decision to show passengers how to open the over-wing exits...

...is adopted as a routine safety measure.

It was a huge accident for us with respect to improvements in the industry

and we have saved lives, because of it.

A better fire training means that today’s flight attendants get to actually feel the heat.

We need to train cabin attendants how to fight a real fire.

That is why the fire fighting simulator is important for the training.

The fire fighting trainer doesn’t move

It is made of solid steel and is completely fire proof

It can simulate three types of on board fire:

a galley fire, overhead compartment fire

and fire from below the floor, one that might originate in the cargo hole.

For some trainees

it is the first time they have had to fight a cabin fire while wearing restrictive gear

For new employees it is important to realize

that the inflight fire is a very difficult situation.

The drill is carried out with a water filled extinguisher

On an actual flight,

they’d be using even more effective halon gas extinguishers

Don’t be afraid, you can get closer

Good experience!

It is the kind of training Barbara Dunn wishes she’d had

when she began her career as a flight attendant.

When I was hired in 1971, we had no simulators at all.

Our fire fighting training consisted of

firing off a water extinguisher in your garbage can and that’s it.

It has changed dramatically, the training process is comprehensive now

Each flight attendant will face the flames before moving on...

...to the most physically demanding drill of all:

Water survival training.

We need to train all cabin attendants as well as flight crew members :

What to do in case of ditching? i.e. landing on the water

More than 2/3 of the earth's surface is covered in water.

When a plane goes down at sea passengers face an incredibly challenging ordeal

those who are lucky enough to survive the impact

...will then have to survive in the open sea

Wearing a life vest could make all the difference

if you know how and when to use it.

You don't want to inflate your vest until after you have left the aircraft.

We don't want the aircraft filling up with water

and you are having your life jacket on, floating at the top

You are not going to be able to dive down with a life jacket on

So, you are really much better off to wait until you get outside and pull your inflation toggles.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome at this survival training

The training begins with a quick lesson on how to safely jump into the water from a ditched plane

That is important:

An injured flight attendant cannot be much help to passengers

This position is protecting your important parts of your body and your head

against the sharp objects in the water.

Now, we have to keep the energy saving position:

Cross your arms and legs

and bend.

Ocean water temperatures can be frigid

as low as 10 degrees Celsius across much of the Atlantic.

Flight attendants learn to preserve body heat to ward off hypothermia.

and stay in that position as long as necessary

All long haul flights over water are equipped with life rafts.

Some, like this one, are slide rafts:

evacuation slides that can convert to a raft

Please, just now, we will board this slide raft

They carry up to 70 people

but they are next to useless if you don't know how to get in quickly and safely

Use all of your red loops

In order to be seaworthy,

the raft needs sturdy side walls that rise a meter above the surface

Anyone trying to board from the water

must negotiate a flimsy fabric ladder

They have to be in good shape to get into a slide raft,

or very motivated.

Even with help from those already on board

it is a physically demanding challenge

all the more reason to put flight attendants through it on a regular basis

All employees they usually say to me that the practical training is more difficult for them

than they expected.

Though water ditchings are rare

perhaps the most famous aviation emergency of all time

ended with passengers fearing for their lives on the open water:

January, 2009

US Airways Flight 1549 departs New York's LaGuardia Airport

There are 150 passengers on board, bound for Charlotte North Carolina

The aircraft took off, uneventfully

and very shortly after take off they lost all engines (as a result of birds)

I caught something in the corner of my eye,

slightly to our right, but still ahead of us was a line of birds

and they were very very close too close for us to manoeuvre around

It went fast, we were on top of them.

All of a sudden, there was a gigantic boom

It seemed like it stopped in mid-air like you hit a brick wall

All of a sudden, somebody said: The left engine is on fire

We don't want to roll both of them rolling back

All of the engines rolled back to idle

There was very little time to warn the cabin There was no time, actually,

The flight crew were busy trying to control the airplane

They were trying to figure out where they were going to land.

After quickly assessing the situation

Captain Sullenberger and First Officer Skiles realize that,

without power they are not going to make it to any nearby airport.

Ditch in the Hudson

I thought to myself: Great, the Hudson was our best opportunity

It was really the only thing in sight where we could land

Let's go!

Put the flaps on

Brace for impact

What does he mean, 'Brace for impact' ?

I had no idea about how to brace for impact.

You need to be aware of your brace position.

In many accidents,

the cabin crew are trying desperately to get the passengers into the braced position

but because they haven't read the safety card they don't know what that means.

Get your heads down and stay down

Proper 'brace' position is knees together, feet flat on the floor

Body bend as far forward as possible with arms wrapped under the legs

or braced against the seat in front of you.

Your body is going to be thrown forward

so if you can get yourself into that position beforehand

the amount of movement is going to be reduced and the level of injury will be less.

In the cabin the passengers prepare for the inevitable

All the passengers really started pulling together and somebody yelled out as we were going down

Are you ready at the doors?

The folks at the doors said: 'We are ready'

Clay Presley does what all passengers should

He stays calm and tries to think ahead.

I started thinking about before we are going to crash

I need to figure out where the exit rows are

If the water comes in

you need to be able to hold your breath long enough to get to those 4 or 5 rows

and get the doors open if you can.

But before anyone can escape, they must first survive a high speed impact...

...into freezing cold water

US 1549 speeds towards the Hudson River

It looked like the airplane was going right to the bottom of the Hudson River

All that solid water cascading over the windshield.

It was like a tornado

Pieces of the plane were being torn apart

Some people were thrown around pretty good,

Then , the airplane popped up

and it was sort of rocking in the waves

In an instant, the $75,000,000 plane has become an unlikely boat ,

floating down the Hudson River

It is now filling with freezing water

That water was cold

It was very cold your feet were freezing

You land in the Hudson in the middle of the winter

the water is going to be very cold

and you are going to suffer from hypothermia very quickly.

Your feet and your hands will get numb They are going to be useless.

Passengers nearest the exits open the doors

I just jumped up very quickly and started making my way to the emergency door

and so I worked my way out onto the wing just a few steps to start with.

Fortunately, they had slide rafts, rather than just slides

so what they were able to do was evacuate passengers into the slide rafts

At the back of the plane, water continues pouring in.

Flight attendants direct passengers forward.

Go over the seats if you have to

We are actually in the water up to our knees, it was absolutely freezing cold

In every part of your body, it ached to the bone

Move forward

We were very confident there was nobody left on the airplane.

Since the plane came down near mid town Manhattan

it is not long before rescuers are on the scene.

I saw the first ferry

and I could see the wheelhouse

I felt like: Okay, we are really going to be okay that was a sight of relief

In the end,

all 150 passengers and the entire crew are brought to safety

another example of how serious aviation accidents often end well.

Absolutely, accidents are survivable

The next time a passenger gets on an airplane,

I want him to be aware of the surroundings

I want them to know where they are sitting

how they get to an exit if they have to

You also need to do your seat-belt up so tight that it is uncomfortable

That is the only thing that will keep you in your seat

and keep you restrained properly

Seats at the front of the plane are often close to the point of impact

when a plane hits the ground.

leading many experts to believe the safest seat during an accident

is one near the back of the plane.

Obviously sitting near an exit is a good idea

but that exit may not be useable in this particular scenario

So, I would say rather than choosing where you are going to sit

be aware of where you are sitting.

For flight crews and passengers alike

there is one more important statistic:

The odds of dying in a plane crash are incredibly small:

less than 1/10,000,000

That means that this Czech Airline's flight-crew and every other crew around the world

will almost certainly never need to draw on their well honed safety-skills.

but if disaster does strike

passengers can rest easy knowing their cabin crew has the skill to get them out alive.

Narrator Stephen Bogaert

Subtitles Rein Croonen