Welcome to Aviation Egress Systems. As a group of 12 students find their places with an adventurous anticipated plan to spend the day experiencing what an aircraft ditching is all about.
The first 90 minutes are for reviewing our DRY Egress completed earlier online at home or work, the introductions, theory, listening, watching, and experiencing what ditching is all about on dry land.....it can't be that hard!!! RIGHT!!
Stand-by aviators for an aviation egress student story
...pilots and passengers alike.........
The fun has just begun as you learn what it is like to escape from a downed aircraft. Bow your head, cross your arms, take a big breath as you learn to control your panic and roll inverted into the water. It sounds sooooo easy....but thankfully, you get to practice this exercise numerous times in a controlled environment with the idea that it will imprint those steps in your mind. The thought is if you ever are in a real-life incident, your mind will automatically engage with the actions taught in this training class.
Reference points are the key to survival.
The Egress Instructors help you from loosing your sense of direction when the aircraft/simulator ditches, sinks, or rolls in the water. Everything changes; what is up is now down, and left is now right. Your mind races as the disorientation takes place, and 10 seconds seems like forever, especially as the adrenaline rushes in and the chaos increases. As you remind yourself, this is in a controlled environment with no cold water shock.
YES, reference points are the key!! If you can only remember that when exiting this simulator.
The idea of Egress Training is to train for success. Some people are comfortable in the water, while others are not. The AES program starts with a gradual training plan to help students grow in comfort throughout the pool exercises. This includes a variety of tasks from life-vest and raft training to numerous exits and scenarios, leading up to a complete inversion, teaching students to control their panic, have a plan and exit the simulator safely, increasing confidence with each exercise.
As our training continues, it is interesting to watch everyone involved confidence grow. There is an interesting group of people brought together for this class pilots, commercial and private, helicopter and fixed wing, frequent flyers, women, men young and old. The children seem to grasp the concept much quicker ... they just love the adventure.
At the end of this one-day adrenaline rush, you will be amazed at how much you have learned through the stories, experiences, and lessons that were taught in the ground school, followed by the simulation, learning to control your panic, hold onto a reference point, inflate a life vest, enter a life raft. In the class, everyone learns at a different rate and in different ways, but as the class concludes, everyone should be able to egress from the simulator successfully.
Saving lives is the ultimate reason for Egress Training. No one wants to respond to an aircraft mishap only to find downed aviators who didn't have the proper training in order to survive. Egress Training can be extremely effective in demonstrating to the class how fast disorientation can take place and what to do when the chaos sets in. You will have to learn how to control your anxiety and work as a team to inflate PFDs, enter a life raft or propel through the water as a group.
In my opinion, no matter how you look at it, one life is worth the training and possibly...
”The life you save may be your own”
