Has a life rift ever been successfully deployed in the event of an air accident?
By successfully I mean removed from the aircraft, placed on the water, inflated and used by passengers/crew as a life raft.
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Sign up to join this communityHas a life rift ever been successfully deployed in the event of an air accident?
By successfully I mean removed from the aircraft, placed on the water, inflated and used by passengers/crew as a life raft.
Sure. For example, Eddie Rickenbacker and 6 other people spent 3 weeks adrift aboard life rafts after their B-17 ditched in WW2.
US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson river after a multi-engine bird strike on January 15, 2009.
According to these pictures, they did deploy the emergency slides which were eventually detached and used as emergency rafts:
Emergency slides in airliners are actual life rafts. They are designed for that and often include survival kits and canopies: