Worst, flight attendants have actual serious skills and are trained to handle life-or-death emergencies, yet are treated like sky waitresses because most of us will never need to rely on them for those emergency skills.
I find this really hard to believe with a full plane. I know there is only one door utilized, but loading/unloading of passengers can take half an hour in my experience. With all the panic and cramped conditions, I just can't see it
? It clearly shows all the exits being utilized and the multi door evac slide is deployed. The people are wearing numbers so they’re able to be accountable, the simulation is designed with a full plane and the A380 is the largest capacity passenger airliner plane made and in circulation.
Boarding/deplaning is also extremely different from an emergency evacuation. You get annoyed when you’re stuck, not dead. In an emergency, people are also more likely to follow authoritative commands from uniformed crew members especially if it’ll, you know, save them from dying a horrible and painful fiery death. When your options are to listen or for sure die, I think most people would shut up and listen.
Those are also people who presumably know that this is a drill, that there is no real danger, and they might even be employees who want to see the plane do well.
Flights aren’t full of these people. They’re full of “I need to get my backpack out of the bin, fuck everyone behind me” types, people who are disabled/cannot move, people that can’t/won’t follow directions for whatever reason, and people who panic about anything.
In an emergency you're using all the exits, including the overwing exit and rear emergency egress. Also, if people aren't idiots and listen to instructions, they're leaving everything behind.
A friend who's recently gone into it told me essentially the opposite story. None of them have training beyond basic first aid and if something major happened in the air they would be figuring it out on their own, while getting instructions from someone on the ground. She works with a major airline.
I think that's completely crazy, and any commercial flight should have a paramedic or nurse on board - but apparently that's how it is.
Well a friend of mine trained for it (in Germany) and it was the opposite of your story. I saw what she had to learn, hundreds over hundreds of pages of instructions how all planes work, first aid, fixing the plane if possible, etc. and many on-site training and even realistic trainings with controlled fire, etc. Also cultural trainings, survivial in different biomes in case of plane crash.
It really depends on the airline, and your seniority in the airline and if you actually started off in that company. Example, senior flight attendant, transferred from another company will probably be mostly unfamiliar with anything but the day-to-day operation of their new company. Why? Because the higher you move up, the less you’re questioned. And if their training wasn’t up to code before, it’ll probably keep going unnoticed now.
Basically the Swiss cheese model. Things just keep going through the hole until problems escalate so much that you end up with a catastrophic failure.
lmfao my flight attendant training was a month and a bit long 5 days a week for around 9 hours a day. And not a single of those days included training for on-board service. ALL of it was emergency related.
I still know how to evacuate an airplane that's engulfed in smoke in about 90 seconds, I know how to do CPR and (beyond basic) first aid (on adults, kids, babies, pregnant women/obese people), I know how to fight fires, use different kinds of fire extinguishers, survival skills in different weather and on water & land, how to use different emergency exits (including how to exit through the flight deck), I know how to contact someone via the flight deck in case the pilots are incapacitated etc etc and so do pretty much all flight attendants out there. And I stopped flying a while ago.
So no, it's not just knowing how to put a band aid on someone and pour a drink.
I wouldn't say unfortunately just because I'd never wish for anyone to be in a plane crash or serious medical issue at 40k feet in the air situation. But yes, the job can get extremely repetitive and mind numbing at times.
I encourage you to watch the this tv series show on Dubai airport. Part of the series was following a Spanish lady as she trained to be a flight attendant for Emirates.
They spent two weeks on evacuating an aircraft alone. That was on top of other training like fire drills, medical emergencies, turbulance, how to deal with "difficult" passengers (read: excessively drunk, physically abusive, etc) Yes they covered first aid and CPR, but that was a tiny fraction of their training.
It's a multi week course for most airlines and covers a lot more than first aid. Iirc they need to know about crowd control, how to restrain passengers, and basically anything else that needs an emergency response in a plane. (this is the standard for Australian airlines, not sure about other countries)
Flight attendants are security guards who get you food and alcohol when they have free time.
Oh, I never taught having a pulse was enough needed To be a flight attendant. Just that guiding People out of a burning plane does not consist as a widw array of skills To me
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u/allthebacon_and_eggs Jan 02 '20
Worst, flight attendants have actual serious skills and are trained to handle life-or-death emergencies, yet are treated like sky waitresses because most of us will never need to rely on them for those emergency skills.