Crash at SFO

[kham]

Yep
Correct

And, the response was "dont evac" at first.
However, they were OBE in other parts of the aircraft where the cabin crew had already begun evacuation. This "Airline" is no where near what people think it is. Every day it gets worse.

[Duncan Edwards]

That's normal. They don't evacuate an aircraft until the pilot says so. He may even specify evacuate port or starboard because of danger outside. Either way the flight attendants don't start getting people out until the captain orders it or there is an obvious need to get out like the passengers are on fire.

[Billie Bonce]

That's normal. They don't evacuate an aircraft until the pilot says so. He may even specify evacuate port or starboard because of danger outside. Either way the flight attendants don't start getting people out until the captain orders it or there is an obvious need to get out like the passengers are on fire.

I'd say, the most impressive case of following the above protocol is Saudia Flight 163. Another case - from what I have read about S7 Airlines Flight 778, I may assume that the death toll would be significantly lower if people would evacuate in more determined way, not awaiting for instructions from the pilots (who actually were dead) or waiting for the firemen to take actions.

For what it's worth, I hear that airliners built in the former Soviet Union make almost everything built in the West look safe by comparison. Perhaps the most public embarrassment for Soviet aviation came when the Pride of Aeroflot, the Tu-144 supersonic transport, blew up in mid-air at the 1973 Paris Air Show.

The Tu-144 spent it career as a freighter to Siberia. I wonder how many comrades were purged over this debacle.

- Big Bad John

I am not a very big patriot when talking about Soviet-made things, but in this case I would argue. Soviet designs were not that bad, and the number of accidents is totally comparable to that in the West. The big problem for Soviets was electronics, so this is true - what Western designs offered to the pilots as automated functions, in Soviet designs should be performed manually. When Western passenger aircrafts were already designed for crew of three or (later) two persons, Soviet aircrafts still demanded four (two pilots, a navigator and a flight engineer). Another problem was fuel inefficiency (what was totally acceptable for the oil-rich USSR). But despite the USSR used wide-body aircrafts (IL-86) on regular flights since 1980, and believe me, typically they were always full of passengers (350 persons), nothing like those accidents with DC-10 of B-747 had ever happened. The sad record of the maximum death toll in flight accidents in the USSR (200 persons - Uchkuduk, 1986) belongs to overloaded Tu-154 and was caused by terrible fault of the crew (with some 'help' of the plane's aerodynamics, to be honest).

Take into account typical disastrously low technological discipline and overall mentality of the Soviet people - I am pretty sure that most Western aircraft in Soviet hands would simply disintegrate in the air (and we already have a bunch of examples of such cases in Russia).

Tu-144 never flew to Siberia. The crash in Paris-Le Bourget wasn't so disastrous as you assume - such events during an aviation show are not so rare. It was much less tragic as compared to the crash of Concorde full of passengers (which happened virtually at the same place). Yes, Tu-144 was mostly a flying laboratory, yes, it wasn't economically effective (and couldn't be such with Soviet prices - there were no legally rich people in the USSR, nobody would pay much for the tickets, and actual price for a Tu-144 flight ticket from Moscow to Alma-Ata was less than half a price for a pair of blue denim jeans - 68 and 180 roubles, correspondingly). And look how beautiful that bird was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RIAN_ ... rliner.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tu-14 ... flight.jpg

[schlamm]

It isn't the Soviet equipment, some of the premiere cutting edge fighters are now built there.....the SU-27 and SU-37 are on my top ten favorites list.

The operators of any piece of equipment, regardless of the country of manufacture, are ultimately responsible for the safe operation of that said piece of equipment.
Aeroflot has come a long way, but in some respects they still scare the hell out of me with what is considered to be 'routine operations', S7 is a respectable carrier and I placed many passengers traveling to Russia on them with no qualms in my airline days.