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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

> it could have helped the flight attendants to quickly determine the exits that are safe.

For obvious reasons, ordering the evacuation, in conjunction with criteria such as which side and which doors is the Captain's job, or if the Captain is incapacitated, the First Officer. They will have access to far more data than the cabin crew will (e.g. whether the engines are safely shut down, circumstances on the ground thanks to radio contact etc.).

The Cabin Crew will not make the decision themselves unless they have been unable to establish contact with the cockpit (i.e. both flight crew incapacitated). In normal circumstances the Cabin Crew are only there to action the Flight Crew's orders.

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This is not at all obvious. The pilots can't look backwards and don't have eyes in the cabin. There have been cases of engine fires and failures where the pilots had to go into the passenger cabin to examine the damage.

Communication is key, but comms might have been down, too. In cases like this the cabin crew have to be prepared to initiate an evacuation on their own, and they have to be prepared to choose which doors to use.

> the cabin crew have to be prepared to initiate an evacuation on their own

Re-read my post, because your conclusion is saying exactly what I already said with your words "be prepared to".

To repeat what I said, but in simpler terms:

In an ideal world, the Flight Crew have the responsibility for ordering evacuation and the associated parameters. End of story, no argument.

BUT there is a well rehearsed, well practiced, protocol which surrounds this !

So, at one extreme, if the Cabin Crew cannot communicate with the Flight Deck, then the decision is clearly theirs.

But before the extreme, we have the obvious scenario .... Cabin Crew act as additional eyes and ears for Flight Crew.

BUT in this scenario we are back to my main point ... the buck stops at the Captain to make the decision !!! The Cabin Crew are telling the Captain what they see, its ultimately his call.

You wrote:

> They will have access to far more data than the cabin crew will (e.g. whether the engines are safely shut down, circumstances on the ground thanks to radio contact etc.).

This is not remotely guaranteed. It would be more accurate to say that the pilots will have access to information that the cabin crew don't have access to and vice versa. If the cabin crew sees that the plane has stopped, there's a fire on board, and instructions are not forthcoming from the pilots, the cabin crew absolutely must initiate an evacuation sua sponte. Heck, if the cabin crew won't do it then the passengers might. People can and do freeze in the face of emergencies. When you have a fire on board all bets are off, and someone had better step up and begin the evacuation -- better that it all be orderly than not, but also better that it happen at all than not.

If the Captain says "evacuate from all doors on port side", yet the FA sees flames outside the door on the port side, the FA does not evacuate through those flames

Right! In a chaotic situation, the idea of hierarchy goes out the window. It is essential that all act rationally as much as possible and make the best decisions that they can with what information is available to them. And it is essential that all staff (flight crew, cabin crew) act with celerity as well to avoid panic among the passengers. Because if the passengers are left on their own then conflicts are more likely to arise just merely on account of the number of passengers being large, and conflicts in such a situation are very likely to be deadly.

The Airbus A350 has an external camera mounted on the tail. I believe that pilots can monitor that video feed in the cockpit so if the system is still working then they should be able to see a fire on one side. But I don't know whether that was possible in this incident.

Notably, Qantas Flight 32 back in 2010, where the flight crew had a dozen contradictory ECAM messages, and it took the second officer entering the cabin to see that an engine had blown up. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...

>In the meantime, the cabin crew had been attempting to get the pilots’ attention using the emergency call button, but all the pilots were so focused on the failures that they initially didn’t notice. Only now did they send Second Officer Mark Johnson to assess the situation in the cabin, whereupon a Qantas pilot riding as a passenger in the upper deck drew his attention to the in-flight entertainment system, which featured a live view of the aircraft from a tail-mounted camera. The digital stream clearly showed a much more literal stream of fuel pouring from the left wing and into the aircraft’s wake, which was also visible with the naked eye from the lower deck. Johnson proceeded down to check for himself, at which point he also observed for the first time that there were two gaping holes in the top of the left wing, surrounded by jagged metal, where the turbine disk fragments had exited.

Cabin crew play a critical role in informing the flight deck of external conditions especially fire that would preclude use of specific exits in an evacuation.

Cabin crew are also eyes for the flight crew. Relevant discussion about the Shatner’s seat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824985

If you look into enough NTSB investigations communication is often the first thing to go during a crash. Even if everyone is still coherent technical problems alone can have quite horrific results. Using a megaphone to communicate is just not that useful in a plane. Which is why every flight attended will stay at their assigned doors instead of comforting passengers. They seem to have quite a bit responsibility when it comes to determining if its a functioning escape route.

Makes sense, but why do we have to open the shades during take-off and landing? It's a honest question, I always heard in case of emergency for the personnel being able to see all sides, but if that's not it, what is it?

It is so the flight attendants can see outside, and also so the passengers’ eyes are adapted to outside light in case of an evacuation. You don’t want people hesitating on the slides because they can’t see.

The other one, often forgotten reason: rescuers should be able see inside.

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