We were told when I went through 74 school that a Pan Am crew successfully evacuated from the top hatch with inertial reels during an (attempted) ground hijacking in Karachi, Pakistan.
Considering the hight of the 747 upper deck and the (presumed) age of the Pan Am crew, I'm sure they felt any risk and fear of using these devises was preferable to the alternative outside the cockpit door. :eek:

I don't care for the design and would've preferred they left the slide in.

That's pretty much the crux, if you're going to use these things, it's because you have lots of motivation. The 747-400 has two upper deck slides which would be preferable, but if you're using the reels it's better than the alternative (fire, terrorist, etc.). My opinion is that they're there for aircraft certification reasons only as the windows don't open. As for their effectiveness? Who knows. I doubt they get checked on a Chinese HMV and it's also limited by the ability to hold on. Spin the wheel, take your chances.

True.

Pan Am Flight 73 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also recall that one of the twenty passengers killed was the Captain's wife.

I flew the -100 and -200 at Evergreen. We were shown a training film (TWA) with a "pilot" using the reel, similar to the Lufthansa film shown here. The instructor had been a long-time TWA indoc instructor.

After the film, the instructor told us the "pilot" was in fact a Hollywood stuntman in a pilot uniform. Not shown:

When he hit the ground, he had a dislocated shoulder.

We also had the "diapers." Rubberized canvas shorts you could hook the reels to with clips (you could do either hand-hold, or connect to the shorts).

Neither one sounded enticing, but I figured if I needed it, I'd rather use the pants, than slide down a razor-blade.

Having used an inertia reel here's my thoughts-

You absolutely don't want to use the diaper unless you're incapacitated. It takes a lot longer to get into and out of. And as previously stated you're going to be using this thing to get out of the airplane in a hurry.

Make sure and deploy the handle so you can get both hands on it.

In the 767 face towards the front of the airplane and don't take a big step off.

Make sure your passport is in your pocket if you're in a foreign country.

All versions of the 747 have slides for the upper deck. This is in addition to the slide or slides.

It varies a bit with configuration, but if you look at the MMEL it becomes clear that there need to be 2 ways out of the upper deck. On the 400F that is one slide and one reel per crewmember.

On the 400C (BCF) you still have the two slides, so all the reels can be inop/missing if both slides are servicable. If one slide is inop then you are back to needing one reel per crewmember. (This is why the BCF can carry more bodies than there are reels -- if both slides are operative.)

On passenger birds an inop slide gets into limitations on the number of pax on the upper deck, and I assume that is the number that can get down the stairs and out a main deck door in 90 seconds. In any case that brings you back to needing the reels for the operating crew.

On quite a few of the freighters, the upperdeck L-1 door has been disabled and thus only one slide remains in the upper deck.

We had one F/E accidentally knock the slide pack out to deploy condition and the slide pack departed the aircraft, impacted the ramp, and did not inflate.

One company I worked for did test the inertial reels for one class.
One guy broke his ankle or foot or leg don't remember which and I one guy was cut up a little on the metal tapes. The reels were never used again in escape training, just the same Pan Am video that everybody has seen ...like a 1000 times.