A recent study suggests that improving aircraft evacuation safety may depend not only on technological advancements, but also on how passengers are distributed within the cabin, especially the elderly.
The study suggests that distributing elderly passengers evenly throughout the aircraft may help speed up evacuation procedures in emergencies, thus increasing the chances of saving passengers during critical times.
This comes within the framework of safety standards adopted by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which stipulate that the entire aircraft must be evacuated within 90 seconds in emergency situations. However, these standards are based on idealized simulations that do not always reflect real-world conditions, such as panic or the varying physical and age capabilities of the passengers.
The data shows that older passengers may experience mobility or cognitive difficulties, which can affect the speed of their evacuation compared to other passengers. For this reason, the Emergency Evacuation Cabin (EVAC) Act was introduced in December 2022, calling for updated evacuation procedures to take into account real-world conditions inside aircraft, such as narrow aisles, close seating, and passenger diversity.
These updates are becoming increasingly important with global demographic changes, as the average age of the global population is expected to rise from 31 to 36 years by 2050, which means an increase in the number of elderly people on air travel in the future.
In this context, researchers conducted a simulation of emergency situations involving a fire in the engines of an Airbus A320 aircraft, a dangerous scenario that could prevent the use of the overwing emergency exits and force passengers to head to the front and rear exits.
The researchers tested three different seating arrangements that could accommodate up to 180 passengers, taking into account the distribution of age groups, including passengers over the age of sixty.
The results showed that the fastest evacuation was achieved within 141 seconds when the percentage of elderly people was low (20%) and they were distributed in a balanced manner near the exits, while the longest evacuation time was recorded at 218.5 seconds when the percentage of elderly people was high, even with them sitting near the exits.
Although these results may seem predictable, their importance lies in the fact that they reflect possible future scenarios with the increasing number of elderly people globally, which calls for a rethinking of passenger distribution strategies.
Researcher Chen Yang (Luka) Zhang, a human factors specialist at the University of Calgary, asserts that these findings could help airlines proactively reduce risks and improve emergency response without impacting operational efficiency.
The study was published in the journal AIP Advances.
