Jumping off from the plane!!

Few weeks ago many would have seen the news flash about Jet Airways 9W2302 (Mumbai – Chennai flight - 27Aug) emergency evacaution.

I was also in the same flight along with two other colleagues of mine, sitting next to emergency exit. I was one of the first passenger to jump out of the plane, had a slide on the wings and had to jump off atleast about 3-4 feet from the wings, landed on my knee and suffered minor injury.

Many who exited through the wings suffered minor to major injury (fractures) and people who have exited through the chute were relatively okay. Some elederly passengers were traumatised.

"All izz not well". This incident is a wake up call for many

a) Passengers – who generally ignore the safety demonstrations, need to pay attention (incidently for the first time I read the safe brouchure completely on this flight as I was in emergency exit… do I know this is coming?). Many passengers got out with their bags and baggages , during emergencies like this life (self and others) are more important than materials!

b) Airlines – not sure how many drills the crew would have gone through to handle situation like this. Still there are questions whether standard operating procedures were followed

c) Airport – can’t imagine in an important airport like Mumbai, it has take more than an hour for first aid. We were on the airside for about 20 mins, on the coach standstill for about 20 mins and on the terminal building for first aid for 20 mins+. The medical room is very small, two wheel chairs can’t make the way. It was a quite time (10pm), the airport and airlines could have used all the space.

On the positive side, the airlines were well prepared when we landed at Chennai at 2am on an alternate aircraft. There were enough staff, doctors, ambulances, care takers, taxis, etc.

DGCA has suspended the pilots and the crew of the flight, in my opinion they have taken a decision of calling emergency based on the situation, what if they ignored and things became worse in mid-air, again people would have blamed the pilot for not taking action. Certainly, airlines and the authorities need to investigate the procedural aspects and the flaws on evacuations, but suspension at this juncture is little too much.

I wish you all a very safe journery whereever you travel.