How do Boeing 777 exits work?

Question

I watched an interview of some passengers from yesterday's British Airways crash and on it they said that "a red light came on on the doors, then the doors flung open and the slides inflated".

This statement makes it sound like the doors went in to some kind of automatic evacuation mode, and there was no input from a flight attendant on each door. Is this right? Were all 8 doors activated remotely from the flight deck perhaps? Is this possible?

If the doors were activated remotely, is this safe? I noticed that one of the slides (L3) was pushed up against debris from the damaged wing and was dangerously titlting sideways at an angle. Surely this slide shouldn't have been used?

Answer 1

That is really troubling.  If this were to happen when the plane had ditched in water, or slid into water at the end of the runway, a door opening could cause the plane to sink quickly.  That is why the exit row people are told to look out the window for debris before using the exit door.

Answer 2

Don't know. But evidently everything worked well enough. I will have to ask my brother. He is a senior Capt on 767-300s. He may know.

Answer 3

The doors are placed in the "armed" mode after the passengers are on board. They are not activated from the flight deck. The doors are activated individualy as the need arises. The cabin crew determines which exits can be used safely.

Answer 4

Please don't be concerned. The doors can only be operated by manually operating each individual door. You can't open a door remotely. Obviously the passengers aren't going to say "The attendant walked to the door and raised her hand to the door lever. Then she... etc. etc." If you try to read too much into statements like what those passengers said it just won't make sense. When the doors are closed before the flight, the slides are connected to the doors by a lanyard so that when they are opened the slide will automatically deploy. The lanyard is disconnected prior to opening the door at the destination.

One question that keeps coming up on here is "why do you have to have the window shades up when taking off or landing?" and that is for this reason, so in case of accident you can look out and see if it is safe to exit on that side of the aircraft or to use that particular exit. Perhaps the slide was pushed up against the debris by the firefighters after it was used. Maybe the flight attendants saw that the slide opened onto the debris and they didn't use it after all. Without knowing all the details it is impossible to speculate.