Overview
- A new peer-reviewed simulation study reports that none of the tested Airbus A320 evacuations met the FAA’s 90-second requirement.
- Researchers from the Universities of Sydney and Calgary published the work in AIP Advances after modeling 27 scenarios with different ratios and seat placements of passengers age 60 and older.
- The team built a full-scale A320 cabin in Rhino 3D and used the Pathfinder agent-based tool to model how people moved during an emergency.
- The simulations assumed a dual-engine fire that made the overwing exits unusable, so passengers had to exit through only the front and rear doors.
- Evacuation times ranged from 141 to 218.5 seconds, with higher shares or clustering of older passengers causing the largest delays, leading the authors to suggest seating older travelers more evenly and testing tailored briefings while noting limits such as no modeled crew assistance and calling for controlled real-world trials that could inform cabin design or updated rules.