Water Survival School

I have been through several survival schools and classes over the years, but I had the opportunity to go through the Water Survival School last week at Aviation Challenge in Huntsville with a group of colleagues from Air Med International (a fixed wing worldwide service.) The school teaches survival techniques for an aircraft ditching in the open seas. I attended along with our chief pilot and two flight nurses from MedFlight to evaluate the benefit of this training for our entire team in the event of a water ditching in our area.

Now you haven't lived until you are upside down... in full flight gear... inside of an aircraft cabin... that "crashes" and goes underwater... and you have to use your newly learned skills to safely egress the aircraft. Oh yeah; and you have no means of artifical breathing... and you have on blinding glasses so you can't see anything and are in effect "blind" underwater... trapped in a sunken aircraft. Then you have to swim under water for about 25 yards to simulate swimming under a surface layer of burning jet fuel. And just for fun they throw in that some of your crew is injured or unconscious. If you make it out and away from the crash site safely then you deploy a rescue raft and get yourself and everyone else onboard. If you don't do all of this correctly you get to do it all over again. Later, we had to make a float out of a t shirt and learn long term swimming and "huddle" floating.

It may seem a little harsh, but it was one of the most realistic and worthwhile courses I have ever completed. It was very educational and even more so, humbling. I hope none of our crews or I ever have to use this training in a real crash situation. I am very grateful, however, to now be even better trained and more prepared just in case the worst ever does happen.