Directional Sound Evacuation - Aircraft

Safe evacuation from Aircraft is a major challenge. Although flying is extremely safe, if there is a serious accident - fire and smoke continue to be the major barriers to survival that can be addressed.

Myth: Accidents involving evacuation are very infrequent

Reality: In a recent NTSB study, 43 evacuation incidents within USA were investigated - they averaged one every 11 days in USA alone, 50% were caused by fires 

Myth: In an aircraft accident, chances of survival are good.

Reality: In a recent NTSB study, 26 accidents were studied involving fire, serious injury, and either substantial aircraft damage or complete destruction. There were 2,739 occupants involved in these serious accidents; of those that died in accidents that were at least partly survivable, 65% were killed by impact and 28% by fire/smoke. Of those that survived impact, but still did not escape, 82% died due to smoke/ fire. This includes those who were unable to find a viable exit. 

One of the major problems is to get passengers to use exits that are viable and nearest to them. Trials have frequently shown that most passengers try to evacuate from exits in front of them - even if the nearest exit is behind. Directional Sound Evacuation can solve this problem by attracting passengers to the closest viable exits.

Successful trials have been conducted with Universities of Cranfield and Greenwich together with an aircraft manufacturer and airline operator. This research is outlined in the British Government's web site: www.dse-web.fsnet.co.uk and also the paper delivered to the International Air Fire and Cabin Crew Conference in Atlantic City October 2001 (.pdf format 402k)

Implementation of DSE on aircraft

In discussion with aircraft manufacturers and operators, it is clear that implementation needs to ensure that the DSE system must:

• Continue to operate even when the aircraft is severely damaged after a crash

• Not conflict with crew instructions to passengers

• Not prevent the crew communicating with passengers or colleagues

• Be simple to operate

• Be able to reflect changing evacuation conditions in real time

• Be independent of other aircraft systems - neither impacting nor dependant on them

Discussions on these requirements point to a relatively simple door by door implementation, locally powered with re-chargeable batteries trickle charged from the aircraft's supply, locally triggered manually by the crew. This would allow the crew to decide exit viability, triggering the DSE beacon as appropriate  - changing as conditions dictate.

Discussions continue with regulators, operators and manufacturers - moving towards implementation. 

The September 11^th tragedies have raised concerns regarding aircraft evacuation safety in US Congress, and a report on cabin safety devices has been commissioned.  Research funded by the EU hoping to improve the evacuation safety of passenger aircraft  conducted further trials using our Directional Sound Evacuation (DSE) technology in the aircraft evacuation simulator at Cranfield University in October 2002.
- Aircraft evacuation data sheet (.pdf format 97k)