“How Was This Approved?” Accident Investigators Slam Flight Attendant Emergency Gear Over Shocking Failures

Aviation accident investigators have published a highly critical report of two types of special firefighting hoods used by flight attendants at major international airlines around the world, slamming them for being difficult to use and prone to unacceptable damage.

The hoods, properly known as Protective Breathing Equipment or PBE for short, are designed to protect flight attendants from smoke, carbon dioxide, and other noxious gases in the event of a so-called ‘smoke, fire, or fume’ event onboard an airplane.

International regulations stipulate that PBE, or ‘smoke hoods’ as they are commonly referred to within the airline industry, should take no longer than 15 seconds to unpack, put on, and activate and should not impair communication between crew members.

Smoke hoods are an absolutely critical piece of airline safety equipment that allows flight attendants to locate and fight a fire that, left unchecked, could result in catastrophic consequences.

But safety testing involving cabin crew who had been specially trained in the use of one of these smoke hoods concluded that it took an average of 78 seconds to don and activate, which is more than five times the amount of time that the hood has been certified for.

The other type of smoke hood didn’t fare much better, taking an average of 58 seconds to unpack, don, and activate.

Real-life emergency prompts urgent investigation

The tests were ordered after a serious incident onboard a SWISS International Air Lines flight from Zurich to Newark on July 11, 2023. The final report, which includes the worrying PBE failures, has only now been published.

During the departure of SWISS Flight 18, the pilots noticed an unusual smell in the cockpit, which got worse after one of the two main air conditioning units on the Airbus A330 was activated shortly after takeoff.

The Captain turned off the air conditioning unit, but as the plane was flying at around 34,000 feet above the English Channel, several flight attendants started noticing a burning sensation in their throats, itchy eyes, and headaches.

Fearing an inflight ‘fume event’ (airlines prefer the name ‘odor event’), the pilots declared an emergency and started to turn back towards Zurich. At the same time, the flight attendants were instructed to use the smoke hoods that were installed at their crew stations.

Shocking failures of SWISS Air’s smoke hoods

As smoke hoods are only certified to last for 15 minutes, two flight attendants at a time took their turn to wear their PBE.

Worryingly, the investigators reported:

• Two flight attendants found it so difficult even to get into the packaging that they had to use scissors to get access to their PBEs.
• It took one flight attendant a full three minutes to unpack, don, and activate the PBE.
• Another flight attendant went to tighten the PBE using the fitted securing straps and one broke off in her hand.
• Communication between the flight attendants was “severely impaired” and “almost impossible” between crew members who were both wearing PBE.
• Breathing with the smoke hoods on was “extremely difficult.”

Further examination of the seven smoke hoods used in the incident also revealed that the protective visor on one of the PBEs was broken, potentially allowing noxious fumes into the hood.

The PBE used by SWISS at the time was made by Collins Aerospace, the world’s largest supplier of aviation products, which still claims the smoke hood can be put on “in less than 15 seconds.”

Testing reveals common problems with two common PBE models

To evaluate the performance of this smoke hood, Swiss accident investigators called in ten trained SWISS Air cabin crew to unpack, don, and activate the PBE in a simulated emergency situation that took place in a special firefighting training room that is designed to look like the inside of an airplane cabin.

Even in the test environment, three smoke hoods were found to have damaged visors, and one PBE failed to activate using its primary activation method.

Collins launched an internal investigation into the cause of the cracked visors and determined this was down to the smoke hoods being subjected to intense heat. However, the three damaged smoke hoods used in the test had been pulled from the airline’s stock room and would unlikely to ever have been subjected to intense heat.

The other PBE used in the exercise was also manufactured by Collins but was originally designed by German breathing equipment company Dräger. This PBE performed slightly better, with crew reporting that the packaging was more intuitive to open, easier to put on, more comfortable to wear, and enabled easier communication.

The second PBE, however, still performed badly in the amount of time it took to put on and activate, with an average time of 59 seconds in the simulated exercise.

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“It is difficult to understand how two common PBE models were approved despite having such an obvious deficit,” investigators slammed in their report. “It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the PBE approval process contains fundamental deficits that have not been recognized so far,” the report continued.

“PBE is primarily deployed in the event of fire or smoke in the aircraft cabin, i.e. in a potentially dangerous, time-critical and complex emergency situation. It is therefore of great importance that protective devices are free of defects and able to be used quickly, easily and without problems by crew members.”

Investigators also criticized SWISS Air for its PBE training protocols, which only involve crew donning dummy smoke hoods that aren’t in any form of packaging.

The Swiss Transportation  Safety Investigation Branch has called on European and US regulators to ensure that the PBE manufactured by Collins does not have any underlying technical defect and is designed in a way that enables it to be donned within a “reasonable amount of time.”

Collins Aerospace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Was a smoke hood the cause of a flight attendant’s tragic death?

In October 2023, SWISS Air announced it was taking urgent action to replace 1,000 PBE units manufactured by Collins. That replacement program took several months to complete.

Late last year, a 23-year-old SWISS Air flight attendant lost consciousness shortly after donning a smoke hood while dealing with a ‘fume event’ onboard an Airbus A220 aircraft. Tragically, the crew member died a week later while in intensive care in the hospital.

An investigation into the cause of the accident is ongoing.