Below is a incident of decompression. Appreciate any comment on this
incident.
Recently (20 days before) my colleagues did experienced a slow
decompression in an A321 in my working airline due to inoperative
pecks.
According to the operating cabin crew on that flight, during service
time they
suddenly heard the public address command from Capt. "Cabin crew,
prepare for
emer. ??????.". The cabin crew did not recognized the last word, some
thought it
was "exit" while some thought it was "descent". At that moment all cabin
crew were
so blur and dazzling that they didn't realize that they were going to
experience a
slow decompression but rather some kind of emergency. However they all
pushed all
the meal carts back to the galley and secured everything. At the mean
time, the
cabin chief purser went into the cockpit in order to seek for further
information
but what she could see and get were the pilots already put on their
masks and a
thumb down signal which was the only signal given. The chief purser
wondered what
is the meaning of thumb down, something bad or something fatal. About 5
mins later
of the capt. command and just before the cabin crew would like to take a
seat, all
the masks dropped and that was the time they were aware of decompression
then they
pull and put on the masks but some of cabin crew claimed that no O2 was
generated
from the oxygen unit although the masks were pulled so they needed to go
to
another area for oxygen flowing masks. In the end no pax or crew injured
fortunately.
After the above incident, those cabin crew reported the communication
between
flight deck and cabin was not enough. They claimed that only one very
short but
not informative command "Cabin crew, prepare for emer. ?????? (might be
descent)"
which was not taught in the cabin crew safety training. I wondered what
would the
other airline's pilots normally do in a similar case in which
decompression is
known in advance and does not occur suddenly. In addition, a
controllable descent
could be performed by the pilots. Will the pilots normally give some
detailed
information to cabin staff or just a command. Unless the command is
universally
understood or being taught in the training otherwise I thought a
physical approach
between flight deck and cabin staff is necessary for sharing critical
information.
Many thanks,
Joktan LO