Aircraft

Video: Airbus A380 evacuation trial infra-red sequence released into public domain

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has released the first publicly-available video clip of Airbus's A380 evacuation trial that took place at its Finkenwerder facility outside Hamburg, Germany on 26 March.

The two minute video sequence (below), appeared on the SIA's A380 microsite overnight. The clip shows preparation for the test, in which 853 volunteer passengers and 20 crew members left the aircraft within 78s, as well as exclusive infra-red footage from the monitor cameras inside the hangar. The tests were carried out to meet European and US certiufication requirements.

Flight group editor Kieran Daly was the only journalist onboard the trial. Read his first hand blog account here.

Airbus originally showed the video clip at internal meetings last month, but declined requests to make it public. flightglobal.com filed requests under European Union access to information regulations with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), for whom the video sequence was made, to bring the video sequence into the public domain. It is not clear whether this prompted the manufacturer to release the clip.

© Airbus S.A.S. 2006