How to Escape Down an Airplane Slide - and Still Make Your Connection!

The crash of a British Airways aircraft on the runway at London’s Heathrow airport last week saw passengers making a hasty, though mostly injury free, exit by way of the craft’s emergency inflatable slides.

Interestingly, or rather, alarmingly, such occurrences are somewhat more frequent than many would probably believe them to be.

Emergency airplane evacuations happen more often than most people think: about once every 11 days in the U.S., according to a 2000 report by the National Transportation Safety Board. Some situations are more dire than others, of course, as when the plane is on fire, but in many cases, the biggest challenge of an evacuation can be the airplane slide.

As to making the connecting flight however, so long as I managed to escape the doomed craft I was on in one piece, I doubt I’d be too concerned about making or, for that matter, missing, the connection.