Soggy Blakeney

I drove over to Blakeney this morning for a U3A talk and wandered down to the quay for a camera photo for blip. The tide was high and covering most of the car park. I can’t believe just how muddy everywhere is in North Norfolk, the roads are a bit slippy in places.

The talk was excellent, it was by a local member who was an orthopaedic surgeon on duty on the day of the Kegworth air crash in 1989. He started by talking us through the crash and how it happened - basically the left hand engine caught fire due to a fractured blade (fire automatically extinguished), the pilots shut down the wrong engine (it was their first flight on this model and their half day transition training hadn’t included that the air con feed in the cockpit came from the opposite side to the plane they were used to), then the faulty engine failed. Most of the talk though was on the injuries of the 79 survivors (37 died), and the work he was involved with afterwards to define an optimal brace position. The brace position recommended at the time resulted in 21 bilateral breaks of both upper arms, meaning those passengers were unable to undo seatbelts or crawl to avoid smoke. Shockingly not all airlines have adopted this or provide the 32 inch seat pitch he thinks is needed. He also told us where best to sit (the bit between the wings) and to be aware of where the emergency exits are and to count the seat backs to the nearest ones in case of restricted visibility). They did their tests on three expensive dummies, but I noticed that they represented men, when I asked he confirmed they didn’t have the money for a female one or a child one!