Passengers jump off plane after fire false alarm

[RecceJet]

Passengers jump off plane after fire false alarm

At least six passengers were injured when they jumped off an Indonesian jet as it prepared to take off from Bali, falsely believing the plane was on fire, an airline official said.

The Batavia Air Boeing 737 carrying 148 passengers and six crew was about to leave the terminal at the resort island's main airport, en route to Surabaya city in East Java, when the incident happened.

"Some passengers saw smoke coming out from the plane's right side. They screamed and shouted that the plane was on fire," airline spokesman Eddy Haryanto said.

"That caused other passengers to panic and rush to the emergency exit. They forced open the door and jumped off the plane," he said.

Six injured passengers were sent to hospital, the spokesman said, adding their condition was unknown.

"There was no fire, it was only smoke from the exhaust and that's normal as the pilot had just started up the engines," Mr Haryanto said.

Indonesia, which relies heavily on air links to connect its sprawling archipelago of islands, has one of Asia's worst air safety records.

- AFP

ABC News

Can anyone confirm whether the process of opening the emergency exits deploys the inflatable slides automatically? I would have thought the crew would need to deploy the slides prior to opening doors in the case of a real emergency.

This article seems to suggest that the passengers opened the emergency exit in panic and the slides were not deployed. Can anyone shed more light on this? I can imagine seeing an engine start with a little smoke and seconds later passengers voluntarily fall out the other side, lol!

[Ramon]

Hello RecceJet,

Hope I can shed some more light on this, as I worked on the 737.

Normally, however company policy specific, are the doors "armed"
before the aircraft is going to taxi. With armed, I mean that the crew
is pulling, or switching a lever on the door. With this action, they
activate a bottle, which will cause the door to open automatically and
blow out the slide, when the large door lever is moved to open.

As the article probably suggest, did the crew not armed the doors,
which will explain the several wounded. As the doors are opened, and
the slide will not deploy, as it was not "armed".

I guess it was a B737-100/200 with the old and smoky "thunder bird"
engines, smoke from these engines is pretty "normal" on the old 737.

Hope this explains a little bit....

Regards, Ramon

[RecceJet]

Thanks for the detailed info Ramon! That's pretty much what I suspected then 

[F-111 C/C]

...and we were just commenting in the other post how there are dumb people everywhere!!

[shawn a]

A long time ago, a 747 leaving San Francisco hit the approach lights at the end of the runway, it got airborne, and one passenger was very happy he changed seats before takeoff. A piece of metal came up through the belly of the plane and pierced his assigned seat!
There was damage to the landing gear and the plane landed OK, but when it stopped, it was sitting on it's tail with the nose way up, so far up the front slides were more or less vertical. People jumped into them anyway, and that's what caused the serious injuries.
 Look before you leap!