Return to Transcripts main page

Business Traveller

Safety While Traveling; Surviving Plane Emergencies; Worldwide Emergency Number

Aired March 14, 2009 - 03:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

RICHARD QUEST, HOST: Hello, and welcome to "CNN BUSINESS TRAVELLER." I'm Richard Quest, this month reporting from Cranebank, the British Airways flight training center in the west of London. We're here because safety in our travels is very much on our minds.

We're going to show you, over the course of this program, how we can be prepared as we travel around the globe. Whether it's up in the sky or down on the ground or in our hotels, the motto: Be prepared.

Coming up, surviving a plane emergency with a safety course from British Airways. Metal detectors in Mumbai, hotels in Greece security. And 112, the number that could save your life.

Let's start with safety in the air, a subject much on our mind at the moment, and for good reason. Statistically, flying is the safest form of travel. But we're still concerned. It's the lack of control, the fear of the unknown. It all means we can be a little bit scared even if we fly frequently.

I'm going to get my training in just a moment. First though, some background briefings from Ayesha Durgahee. And please, put down your newspaper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AYESHA DURGAHEE, BUSINESS TRAVELLER CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You find them in the seat-back pocket amongst magazines and menus, safety cards showing step by step what we should do in an emergency. The pictures are reinforced with video and a demonstration. Because accidents involving aircraft are rare, you'd be forgiven for carrying on reading or choosing which film to watch first.

For instance, in 2008, there were 22 accidents involving western-built planes. Eight of them involved fatalities. And the industry-wide accident rate is one for every 1.2 million flights.

With several well-publicized cases so far this year -- the U.S. Airways plane ditching in the Hudson, a commuter jet that crashed into a house on approach to Buffalo Airport, and most recently the Turkish Airlines 737 that landed short of the runway at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport -- it's a reminder that things can go wrong. And it's natural to think twice about boarding a plane.

KIERAN DALY, AIR TRANSPORT INTELLIGENCE: This is the famous "they only come in threes" theory. Everybody in aviation talks about the fact, whenever there's one accident, then you get another two straight off. The statistics sort of, kind of bear this out. I think the reality is that when you get one accident, everybody becomes very attuned to any accident anywhere in the world. And they'll take, in some cases, some very minor incidents and say, you know, there's another one.

The reality is the statistics just show -- I say this all the time, but there's no getting away from it -- that aviation is getting safer and safer and is now staggeringly safe. Very, very difficult to think how you could make it safer.

DURGAHEE: Difficult, but not impossible.

At the start of 2009, IATA made mandatory it's operational safety audit, or IOSA, for all its 230 member airlines. Anybody can look at the IOSA registry and find out who has passed the safety audit.

Lessons can be learned from those who have survived to tell their story, like the U.S. Airways emergency landing in the Hudson.

BARRY LEONARD, PASSENGER, U.S. AIRWAYS FLIGHT 1549: Previously, I really didn't listen to them that much. I figured that I knew everything. But since that time, I have taken the safety card out and spent a lot of time honestly going over it, and also counting the rows to the closest exit.

DURGAHEE: In these isolated cases, it shows that not all accidents are fatal. With safety at the forefront of everybody's mind, there's no doubt that the next time we're on board, we'll stop what we're doing and pay attention to the safety briefing, no matter how seasoned a traveler we may be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUEST: The B.A. flight training center is used by all the airline's 3,000 pilots and 15,000 members of cabin crew to train and refresh safety equipment procedures, or SEPs.

The expertise and equipment is available to companies and business travelers on specially designed safety courses.

ANNOUNCER: In the event of landing on water, remove the life jacket from the container and pull it over your head. Pass the tapes around your waste and tie them securely in a double bow at the side.

QUEST: After an introduction in the classroom, this is where the course really begins, in a simulator, embarking on what feels like any other flight. We know something's about to happen. We're all eyes and ears.

ANNOUNCER: Thank you for your attention.

ANNOUNCER: This is the captain. This is an emergency. Grace. Grace.

CROWD: Grace. Grace. Grace.

ANNOUNCER: This is an emergency. Evacuate. Evacuate.

ANDY CLUBB, B.A. SAFETY COURSE DIRECTOR: How fast do you think that was coming to the plane? How fast do think that was coming to the plane? Go to the rear of the aircraft. Unfasten your seatbelts. Rear door's jammed. Go forward. Rear door's jammed. Move forward.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNY EDMONDSON, B.A. SAFETY COURSE DIRECTOR: Go that way. Go that way.

Forward cabin check.

CABB: Rear cabin check.

EDMONDSON: Jenny, leaving the aircraft.

CABB: Aircraft clear.

QUEST: Doing this first exercise, what I've realized is something that is so familiar, just sitting, waiting for takeoff, can suddenly become very unsettling. Yes, almost frightening.

By continually shouting "Grace," the crew ensure we stay in the safest position until the plane finally stops.

Only recently, we had a reminder of how important this is in the Turkish Airline's plane crash at Schiphol.

MUATATA BAHCECIOGIU, PASSENGER, TURKISH AIRLINES FLIGHT 1957: (Through translation): The plane was swinging from side to side and tried to climb but it couldn't. And then it just went smashing really hard into the ground. And then the noise it made was like a huge bang. For the first 10 seconds, it was completely silent in the aircraft. Everyone was terrified. It was deadly silent. And then what you experience is just shouting and screaming because that's when you notice that you've broken something.

QUEST: A report issued by the Dutch Safety Board has now discovered that the planes' left-hand altimeter wasn't working properly. It showed the plane was flying at an incorrect altitude. And that may have caused the crash.

After our simulated emergency landing, we're back on board for a debrief. The top three points that everyone believed were most useful, learning the correct brace position.

CLUBB: What you don't want are your elbows on top of your thighs, repeatedly impacting on your thighs, giving yourself a dead leg.

QUEST: Making sure your seatbelt is not twisted. That would be dangerous if the plane stops quickly. And that the oxygen masks will only come down when pressure is lost and not in a fire.

The course doesn't just go through the important basics. It's a hands-on experience.

Put head through hole.

CLUBB: First and foremost, remember this is purely for training. You world never do this inside an aircraft. You would only inflate this outside the aircraft.

Look, could you read out the instruction on that jacket?

QUEST: Jerk to inflate.

CLUBB: Jerk to inflate.

QUEST: We learned how to open the over-wing emergency exists correctly.

It is heavy.

CLUBB: And with the adrenaline that you might have, you would...

(LAUGHTER)

You might just try to pry it over and enter the wing, but there have been cases in point where people have thrown it and then placed near the wing.

QUEST: Not bad. But what happens when there's a full row of people in the way.

Now, suddenly, this becomes a lot more challenging, doesn't it?

Easy for him to do.

CLUBB: The thing is, if you need to get out really, really quickly, you need to get out really, really quickly. And the longer you delay here, the more people you will have coming this way to evacuate. So it's got to be done instantaneously.

As you're just taxiing onto the gate, you'll hear the call, "Cabin crew doors to manual. We're making the doors safe. What's the other call you hear? "Cabin crew doors to automatic." That's just as you leave the gates, as you're departing on your journey here. I'm going to arm the door, so that if the door is opened, the slide will fire.

That's it. Just go.

QUEST: So now we know what "cabin crew doors to automatic" actually means.

If you ever get to the aircraft doors before the cabin crew, you'll also know what to do.

So you've got off the plane. But when we come back after the break, getting out of your hotel could save your life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

QUEST: Welcome back to "CNN BUSINESS TRAVELER" where this month we're all about safety.

I've left the B.A. course because we want to look at safety in hotels. The good news is that fires in hotels are extremely rare. And the news gets even better because the survivability when they do happen is also extremely high.

And we can do certain basic things ourselves that really do improve our chances.

Hotel corridors are very long and they all look the same. So just as we did on the plane, we need a way to get out quickly. Instead of counting seats, this time, we count doors. So we know how many doors there are between our room and the emergency exit.

If you're a frequent traveler, think about getting one of these. It' an emergency be-prepared kit. This one costs $35.

We won't all agree on everything to be carried. For example, I wouldn't take the emergency drinking water. But as for the rest, pretty essential: a torch, a whistle, and something I always have in my case, a smoke hood. This could really save your life in an emergency.

When it's time for bed, prepare just in case. You don't want to be looking around for essentials in an emergency. So put in your shoes your torch and your mobile phone. They will be there if you need them. And don't forget the most important thing of all -- the room key.

Before you leave the safety of the room, check the door and see if it feels hot. If it does, the blaze might be on the other side. You're safer off staying in the room. In which case, in the bathroom, start running all the water and fill the bath and the sink. Take towels. Don't worry about this. Just get them nice and wet. You might need these towels to help you breathe in the event of smoke.

Some of those wet towels should be placed against the door to stop smoke coming in.

So you've left your room in an emergency and suddenly you realize the fire is close by. Time to go back to the safety of your room. But now is not the time to realize you've forgotten the key. This is the most important thing you need to take with you, because this can let you back into safety.

I'm pretty certain we'll all remember to take our mobile phones with us. And now, there's an extra reason to do so. Even if it's not your own phone and it doesn't have a SIM card and it's locked, you can always dial 112, the emergency number throughout the GSM network. This one is essential.

You will probably never use most of this information, but I think you will agree, when you need it, you'll be glad you know it.

Keeping guests safe has always been a priority for hotels. But recent events have given it a new importance. I'm thinking of Mumbai where terrorists attacked western hotels. Now those hotels have introduced new measures to keep the guests safe, as Mallika Kapur reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALLIKA KAPUR, BUSINESS TRAVELLER CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Taj and the Oberoi, both iconic Mumbai hotels attacked by terrorists last November, now working hard to put it all behind them and on making their quests feel welcome and safe.

DEVENDRA BHARMA, EXECTUTIVE V.P., OBEROI HOTELS AND RESORTS: We can never thwart an attack like that. We can only have deterrence. We can only create values and create as many checks as we can. But we can never fight back something as severe as what we experienced on 26-11.

KAPUR: Even travelers who come back to Mumbai and stay at the Oberoi will find new security measures have been put in place. No cars are allowed under the porch of the hotel. All bags and parcels are screened. And guests must enter by walking through a metal detector.

SUSAN GURLEY, ASSOCIATE OF CORPORATE TRAVEL EXECUTIVES: There's a real balance between a sense of security and a sense that you're basically under lockdown. So I think every hotel is trying to find the exact balance.

Now personally, I don't mind seeing one or two security guards walking around. It gives me a sense of security. But do I personally want to see people in the hotel lobby with machine guns patrolling for my security? No.

KAPUR: At the Oberoi, the security you and I can see is just part of the story.

(on camera): So your idea of security is to make the security sort of as non-intrusive as possible?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right. It could be discreet patrolling of floors. It could be a discreet on everybody's credentials. It's the level or training of the staff.

KAPUR (voice-over): The Mumbai attacks were the first of its kind in India. But it's not the first time hotels have been targeted.

DAVID CAMERON, TRAVEL SECURITY DIRECTOR, CONTROL RISKS: Hotels in critical business and tourist hubs are a critical asset and need to be protected. The second point is, to protect them requires excellent cooperation from the government and the private sector. And it takes resources. And I'm pleased to say that there is a lot of work being done in that area.

KAPUR: Business traveler Kevin Waterson was staying at the Taj Hotel during the Mumbai attacks. He's in favor of increased security at hotels as long as it's discreet.

KEVIN WATERSON, MUMBAI ATTACKS SURVIVOR: Hotels can put in place the security engines that one might find at airports and things like that. Because that's what you need. You need to scan everything. You need to walk through x-ray machines every time you come in and out of the hotel. It's really just something to be practical. If it's going to be oppressive, it's going to really detract from the pleasure of staying, which are often lovely places to stay on business travel.

KAPUR: Even though it was Waterson's first time in India, he's undeterred by the attacks.

WATERSON: It's hard to handle afterwards. It has a lasting impression. And people have often asked me, would you go back. And I say absolutely. I feel there's unfinished business. And I had a fantastic time there. It was cut short unfortunately. So, yes, I would definitely be going back at some stage.

KAPUR: No hotel can guarantee a guest safety, unless perhaps you end up in this hotel room in Berlin, said to be the world's most secure and probably the most expensive.

STEPHEN INTERTHAL, G.M., ADLON KEMPINSKI HOTEL: This suite was simply constructed -- was constructed for the simple reason of having an equivalent product which serves the demand of the so-called S1 security level worldwide, which applies basically for any royal member, royal family member, head of states, et cetera.

KAPUR: $25,000 a night will get you a room with bullet proof windows, walls, and armored doors.

But Waterson believes personal safety can come down to some basic inexpensive measures.

WATERSON: It that case, you need to maybe be just a little more prepared. So keeping things like your phone with you at all times. Don't leave it in the room charging because you just don't know if you're going to get back to that room, as I discovered. Some of my colleagues -- which was a vital piece of equipment in keeping contact with, first, the family, but also with our colleagues that are checked in different parts of the hotel.

KAPUR: There's one more item Waterson always carries with him now, his room key from the Taj Hotel. He says it's a constant reminder of just how lucky he was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUEST: Coming up after the break, when it's time to leave the plane in an emergency, you may use the door, but you'll be going down the slide.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

QUEST: Welcome back to "CNN BUSINESS TRAVELLER," where this month, we're all about safety.

We've shown you what a simulated emergency landing looks like, the risks involved and how you can be prepared. But there is another danger which must always be at the forefront of your mind. That's the risk of fire.

EDMONDSON: When it comes to fire situations, it's the smoke that is more dangerous than the fire itself. The smoke is full of poisons. It's got carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide in it.

I'm going to switch off the lights. When we've got a smoky area, we're going to put the floor lights on and I'm going to ask you to make your way to the exits.

QUEST: Previously, in the simulator, the cabin started to fill with smoke. So we left immediately.

Here in B.A.'s smoke chamber, we're going to experience what it's like when the room fills with smoke.

EDMONDSON: How are we going to stop ourselves on an aircraft, breathing this in? Over your mouth and nose, yes. Quite often you have one of those little handkerchiefs they use as a seat back thing. Get that down, or any of your clothing just to get it as a filter. And get down as low as possible because smoke comes down and then it starts to mushroom up. And it sits. And this will just start to move lower and lower and compress the fresh air to the floor area.

Now, if you are in your hotel room or in an office or something and there is a fire, obviously most people tend to want to panic and start to move about and think, where's that fire extinguisher. Can you see what I'm doing? Once you start to move, you're dragging the smoke down. That's why it's important to get down as low as possible.

QUEST: In an emergency, people will panic. So count the number of seat rows to the nearest exit. It will help you get out quickly.

EDMONDSON: OK, our layer of smoke is getting lower and lower. If any of you would like to, just stand up very carefully, put your head up into this pea soup at the top here and see the difference between here and the clearer air that we've got down here at ground level.

QUEST: Wow. Wow.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: The smoke is thick. Colored lighting is what we'll have to rely on to find the emergency exit.

EDMONDSON: I'm going to switch off the lights. Can you see the red lights now? Is everybody ready?

QUEST: One, two, three, four.

So now we are prepared as best we can. But there may come a time when it's time to leave the plane through the door and down the slide.

We're wearing overalls for this exercise to prevent friction burns on the way down. We receive a briefing at the bottom of the slide.

EDMONDSON: You don't have time to sit at the top and get yourself comfortable before you go. We've only go 90 seconds. So you will be stepping from the platform there and onto the slide. Leg's out straight, hands across holding your collar. And then the most important thing of all is you need to lean forward. When you get to the bottom of the slide, you will hit this deceleration pad here, or as we call it, the knicker gripper. And this will stop you.

QUEST: Here, we have the luxury of taking our time. We get an idea of what it's like before we actually jump.

There are strict rules about how the slide must deploy. It must unfurl in winds of up to 28 miles an hour in just six seconds, whatever the temperature, whether minus 65 or 160 degrees, Fahrenheit.

EDMONDSON: Excellent. Lean forward. Excellent.

(APPLAUSE)

QUEST: And that's "CNN BUSINESS TRAVELLER" for this month. I'm Richard Quest at the B.A. flight training center near London.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jump!

QUEST: Wherever your travels may take you, I hope it's safe and profitable. And I'll see you next month.

END