Following the dramatic video of an American Airlines flight evacuating on a Denver runway last month, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is sending a letter to new FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford demanding answers on evacuation safety.
“The FAA needs an evacuation standard that reflects the reality of flying today,” Duckworth told CBS News in a statement. “The American people deserve to know whether the FAA is taking this responsibility seriously and complying with the law to ensure the flying public can be safely evacuated from an aircraft during an emergency.”
Duckworth, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Aviation Subcommittee, is concerned about the ability to evacuate an airliner in 90 seconds or less.
“Video showed passengers exiting with carry-on bags and, according to at least one passenger, the process took 10 to 15 minutes — the latter estimate exceeding FAA’s 90 second evacuation standard by 10 times,” she wrote in her letter to Bedford.
The senator is seeking details about three recent evacuations.
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are currently investigating after American Airlines Flight 3023, traveling from Denver to Miami, experienced a landing gear issue during takeoff with 173 passengers and six crew members on board. The Boeing 737 Max 8 was going nearly 150 mph when the pilots slammed on the brakes. As passengers used emergency exit slides to evacuate, flames could be seen coming from the landing gear on July 26.
“We heard a loud boom, and I said ‘That’s not good,'” passenger Mark Tsurkis recounted. “Most of the people evacuated safely, except a few people who decided to take their luggage with them and that kind of, you know, that endangered others and endangered them.”
In April, a Delta A330 in Orlando experienced an engine fire, prompting passengers to evacuate. Kyle Becker, who was sitting in row 35, said he opened the window as soon as he heard people yell “fire!”
“There was a fire on the engine,” Becker told CBS News at the time. “[It] was a little scary… just never had happened to me before. Start thinking, like, OK, what are the next steps. Trying to remain calm.”
This incident also prompted an FAA investigation.
And in March, another American Airlines Boeing 737 experienced a fire stemming from an engine issue while it was parked at a gate at Denver International Airport. Passengers filled the wing of the plane trying to escape the smoke.
“Everyone was screaming, ‘There’s a fire. There’s a fire,'” Helen Prager, who was on the plane, recalled. “Literally at the gate and I was screaming, ‘Get the doors open.'”
The FAA and NTSB are looking into the fire.
“While FAA has yet to disclose how long any of the referenced passenger evacuations took, these incidents once again raise serious questions about FAA’s 90 second evacuation standard as well as FAA’s assumptions about how evacuations occur in real world conditions (such as the assumption every passenger will comply with instructions to deplane without carry-on bags),” Duckworth wrote in her letter.
She wants the FAA to disclose how long the evacuations took and how many passengers took their bags with them, as well as how many children, seniors and passengers with disabilities were on board each of the flights.
The senator is also seeking an update on evacuation testing that Congress mandated the FAA complete within one year of the FAA’s reauthorization bill passing. That deadline passed in May. The updated testing was to replace a series of tests the FAA conducted in 2019 that did not include any real-world scenarios such as luggage in the cabin and passengers who were children, seniors or not able-bodied.
Last year, Duckworth told CBS News she did not believe she could get off a plane during an emergency in under 90 seconds.
“Not at all confident, not at all confident. I often fly where I’m not wearing both my artificial legs,” said Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving in the Iraq War. “I don’t think it’s realistic anymore. … Conduct a real test and let’s see what the realistic standard is.”
Duckworth asked the FAA to respond to her letter by Aug. 12.
“We need answers. Are the current [plane] evacuation standards, are they adequate?” former NTSB chair and CBS News transportation safety analyst Robert Sumwalt said. “It’s definitely time for the FAA to go back and reassess what standards they’re using for evacuations. It’s been almost 35 years since those standards were published.”
CBS News has reached out to the FAA for comment.
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