Effect of door delay on aircraft evacuation time

The recent commercial launch of twin-deck Very Large Transport Aircraft (VLTA) such as the Airbus A380 has raised questions concerning the speed at which they may be evacuated 1. The abnormal height of emergency exits on the upper deck has led to speculation that emotional factors such as fear may lead to door delay, and thus play a significant role in increasing overall evacuation time 2. Full-scale evacuation tests are financially expensive and potentially hazardous, and systematic studies of the evacuation of VLTA are rare 3. Here we present a computationally cheap agent-based framework 4 for the general simulation of aircraft evacuation 5-7, and apply it to the particular case of the Airbus A380. In particular, we investigate the effect of door delay, and conclude that even a moderate average delay can lead to evacuation times that exceed the maximum for safety certification. The model suggests practical ways to minimise evacuation time, as well as providing a general framework for the simulation of evacuation.