For those of you who missed this played out on TV, here is some remarkable video of the evacuation of American Airlines flight 31, which returned to LAX shortly after takeoff yesterday because of smoke in the cabin.
Few travelers have ever watched an actual emergency evacuation with the exit slides unfolding. And watch (although the clip is edited) just how fast the emergency crews, and even the buses to pick up the passengers, arrived.
The TV crew that filmed the evacuation was already at the airport, to cover the ceremonial landing of an Airbus A-380 — bringing new meaning to “right place, right time” for a news reporter and photographer.
On the satire/news site Fark.com, the headline said a lot about the state of the aviation industry today: “American Airlines jet makes emergency landing at LAX; all passengers willing to pay $10 emergency egress fee evacuated via slides.”
And from the L.A. Times Daily Travel and Deal Blog, “Since no one was hurt I can say it: Those emergency slides look like fun. Weee!”
The A380 landing was delayed by 45 minutes and the water cannon ceremonies were scrapped.
