The plane would not pull the slides down with it (slides are differnt then rafts). The slides are located in the doors and designed to deploy when the door is opened with the girt bars installed in the floor. The slides are very easy to remove from the aircraft by simply removing a pin once they are deployed. You can't cut the slides away from the airplane like the news says. For the most part, the news totally screwes up almost all airplane realated news. The so called "experts" have no idea what they are talking about.
DJS... Youd be suprises how far a jet can glide without any power. If you lose both engines on a 2 engine jet at 36,000 ft you can glide a long ways. Probably 80-100 miles. The crew did a very good job, but the news media makes it seem like the pilot was a god, he was not. They were very lucky that they lost the engines where they did. You couldn't ask for a better place for that to happen. To be honest, if I lost both engines I think id rather land on smoth water like the crew of USair crew did. They didn't have to worry about overshooting or undershooting a runway with no power. All they had to do was hold the plane in ground affect and bleed off speed until the plane was ready to sit down in the water. I give the crew tons of credit, but, if you want to here a heroic pilot story read about Al Haynes. He was the pilot of the United DC10 that crashed in Iowa. Now he is a heroic SOB.. He had very little control over his DC10 when the #2 engine blew and caused a loss of all hydraulic systems. That ain't supposed to happen. He was as cool as ice the entire time, that guy, now he is one heroic SOB....
