Cabin crew had severe difficulty communicating with passengers during an emergency landing because the crew were wearing smoke hoods, an accident report said today.

The smoke on a Flybe flight from Birmingham to Edinburgh was thick enough to prevent the crew on the Bombardier DHC-8-400 aircraft seeing the length of the cabin, the report from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said.

The cabin crew said the smoke hoods had "severely hindered communications with passengers, impeding both hearing and being heard", the report added.
Because of this, one crew member removed her hood shortly before landing.
The cabin crew had undergone smoke hood training but "it appeared that this had not fully prepared them for the extent of the associated communication difficulties, raising questions about the training", the AAIB said.

With the pilots concentrating on making an emergency landing, the cabin crew's delay in getting a response from the flight deck had "caused concern as to the state of the flight crew", the report added.

Because of hearing difficulties caused by the smoke hoods, the cabin crew did not hear the landing calls from the flight deck.

Some passengers had asked if they could have breathing protection, but "smoke protection for passengers is not a requirement on public transport aircraft", the report said.

The smoke was caused by leaking oil getting into one of the air conditioning units. The captain had noticed a "slight musky smell" when the engines were started on an earlier flight that day but did not consider it to be out of the ordinary.

The report said that the source of the smoke on the Birmingham to Edinburgh flight should have been identifiable but the crew judged that landing was the priority given the rapid rate of increase in the smoke.

The plane landed safely at Leeds Bradford airport on the morning of August 4 2005, with an emergency evacuation being carried out without injury.

The AAIB report said that in a three-year period to August 2006 there had been 153 cases of fumes, abnormal odour, smoke or haze in the flight deck and/or cabin of UK-registered passenger planes.

Around 119 of these cases had probably resulted from contamination of conditioned air.

It appeared that in many cases the crew had found it difficult or impossible to establish the source of contamination.

In the light of the Flybe emergency, the AAIB report today recommended a review of cabin crew smoke hood training.

The report also called for a system to help flight crews rapidly identify smoke sources and for improved communications between flight and cabin crews.