An evacuation slide is an inflatable slide used to evacuate an aircraft quickly. An escape slide is required on all commercial (passenger carrying) aircraft where the door sill height is such that, in the event of an evacuation, passengers would be unable to "step down" from the door uninjured (Federal Aviation Administration requires slides on all aircraft doors where the floor is 6 feet (1.8 m) or more above the ground). 
    Escape slides are packed and held within the door structure inside the slide bustle, a protruding part of the inside of an aircraft door that varies in size depending on both the size of the aircraft and the size of the door.
Many, but not all slides are also designed to double as life rafts in case of a water landing.

*Window exits 
    Some aircraft have escape slides on the main doors of the plane, but do not have slides over the wings due to the fact that, when the flaps are fully lowered, the wings are low enough to the ground that passengers can evacuate safely. Some of these aircraft are the Embraer 190, Boeing 707, 717, 727 and 737. However, other aircraft require the use of over wing slides for the window exits to ensure passengers are able to reach the ground quickly and safely. These include Boeing 767, Boeing 757, and Airbus A320-series aircraft. Typically, over wing evacuation slides are not designed for use in ditching situations as they cannot be detached and will not operate, as the system is disabled by the aspirators on the slide taking in water.

*Types 
    There are two types of aircraft evacuation slides: slides and slide/rafts. A slide is for use only on land as a means of escape, although it has sufficient buoyancy to allow passengers to hold on to a lanyard running the length of it and use it as a buoyancy aid. A slide/raft is an evacuation slide that can be used both as a means of escape in a land evacuation and also as a life rafts in a landing on water. Slide/rafts usually feature an erectable canopy, outer compartments to hold passengers and survival packs containing items such as leak stoppers, paddles and flares. 
    Slides can also be single or dual lane, depending on the width of the exit, a dual lane slide being capable of evacuating a greater number of people quickly in an evacuation. 
    Slides and slide/rafts can be detached from the girt bar, usually by a two or three step procedures. This may, for example, involve lifting up the flap on the girt bar, and pulling the detach handle. These procedures are usually placarded red on the slide, "For Ditching Use Only". Once the slide is separated, the slide remains attached to the aircraft by a mooring line. This line will break if the airframe submerges, or can be disconnected with a pre-supplied knife or disconnect handle. 
    A ramp slide is an evacuation slide that has a small platform between the exit and the slide itself, and is used mainly where the proximity of the exit to an engine requires the slide to be angled away from the engine to prevent damage. Airbus A310, Airbus 340-600, Airbus A380 and Boeing 747 aircraft have ramp slide attachments for their over wing evacuation slides. The over wing exits on the Airbus A320 series, Boeing 757-variant and Boeing 767-variant aircraft also utilize ramp slide attachments. 
    Another unique type of evacuation slide is found on certain DC-9, MD-80 and Boeing 717 aircraft. This type of slide is located in the aircraft's tail cone. This slide deploys after the tail cone is jettisoned by flight attendants, allowing for evacuation through the rear of the airframe. The procedure to use this exit may involve removing a plug-type pressure bulkhead, or a swing type door that leads directly to a walkway. At the end of the walkway are the slide pack and a manual tail cone jettison handle for use if the tail cone has not already been automatically jettisoned by opening the walkway entrance. 
    Certain evacuation slides do not use a slide bustle on the door as a container. Instead, the slide is "fuselage mounted" and is attached to a container located underneath or below the exit close to the aircraft exterior. This design of slide is found in the Airbus A321 aircraft at the emergency doors, and typically at all over wing evacuation slides other than the Boeing 747-400 series aircraft.
    One of the newest developments in evacuation slide technology can be found on the Airbus A380, which was developed by Goodrich Aircraft Interior Products. Certain slides on board the aircraft have the Tribrid Inflation System, which is connected to a sensing system within the door. If the door is opened in emergency mode at an abnormal attitude (e.g. nose up position due to the loss of landing gear), the slide will inflate normally but will also inflate several feet of additional slide to ensure the slide reaches the ground. This compares differently to the Boeing 747 as doors found on that aircraft have no such system; should the slide not reach the ground, the doors must be blocked to prevent passenger injury.

*Usage 
    In an article in TIME, Amanda Ripley and Dan Johnson, an aviation safety expert, compiled some tips on how to avoid injury and escape from a plane on an inflatable slide. Here are their suggestions. Number one: Have a Plan. Know where the exits are when you sit down on a plane. Two: Have a back-up plan. Passengers often have trouble opening the exit hatches and slides sometimes malfunction. Three: Get out fast. Don't even think about grabbing your overhead luggage. Four: Jump! Johnson says if everyone would jump the evacuation could go 50% faster. And faster is better. Five: to avoid burns keep your heels up and your arms crossed over your chest. Women should avoid wearing pantyhose and spiked heels when they fly. The hose can melt onto the skin in the heat of a plane fire. Six: When you reach the bottom, get out of the way. Pile-ups at the bottom of the slide can be brutal and slow down the exit for everyone. [1]

*Inflation systems 
    Both slides and slide/rafts use a non-explosive, inert gas inflation systems. The FAA requires evacuation of the entire aircraft in 90 seconds using 50% of the available evacuation exits. To meet this, all evacuation units need to deploy in less than 10 seconds. For large, wide body aircraft such as A300's and B747's a successful deployment is complete in about 5-7 seconds, depending on conditions (such as cold and winds).
T    he inflation system usually consists of a pressurized cylinder, a regulating valve, two high pressure hoses and two Aspirators. The cylinder can be from 100 to about 1000 cubic inches, filled to about 3000 psi with either gaseous Nitrogen, or a mixture of gaseous CO2 and Nitrogen. Once made of steel, most cylinders now are made of aluminum or alloy cores wrapped with fiberglass, or other lightweight, fuel saving materials. The CO2 is used to slow down the rate at which the valve expends the gases.

    The valve is used to mechanically meter out the gas at a rate of roughly 3 - 600 psi and 4 CFM. Typically there are two high pressure hoses attached to the valve, which are connected at the other end to 'Aspirators'. These are usually cylindrical, hollow aluminum tubes with sliding cylindrical or internal 'flapper' doors that open when high pressure gas is applied, and close when the gas stream     subsides and the internal slide back pressure reaches about 2.5 - 3.0 psi. They work on the 'Venturi' principle, and draw outside air into the evacuation unit at a rate of about 500:1. A 750 cu. in. cylinder can fill a slide with about 850 cu ft (24 m3). of air to a pressure of about 3 psi in about 4 - 6 seconds. 
    In order for the slide to deploy correctly, it is packed in a manner that has the aspirators directly under the outer cover. The entire, self contained 'slide pack' is approximately 3 ft (0.91 m) wide, 2.5 ft (0.76 m) wide and about 12" high, depending on aircraft type. In the center, forward part of the pack, a multi-layered piece of heavy urethane or neoprene/nylon fabric, called the 'girt', is left hanging out to a length of about 2 ft (0.61 m). When installed in the aircraft, a 'girt bar' is put through the center, outside end of the girt and attached to the interior floor, just inside and in front of the exit door. On the face of the girt are instructions in large red lettering, and a handle with the word 'PULL' on it. 
    This is rarely used however, because the lanyard attached to the handle runs through the girt to the valve, which are several inches too short when the girt is extended fully. When the slide is in the 'armed' position and the door is opened, the slide pack falls free of the door bustle (a semi-rigid outer container) and the weight and momentum of the slide pulls the lanyard from the valve, initiating the flow of gas. At about the same time, a metal pin that holds the center of the Valise closed is also pulled, releasing a 'daisy chain' and the two halves of the cover. When the cover is released and the inflation system activated, the two aspirators come shooting out of the     pack, gulping vast quantities of air and restrained only by the fabric tubes to which they are securely fastened. 
    In order to compensate for any wind, new evacuation slides contain internal baffles, which cause the ends nearest the aircraft to inflate first, which are constructed to come out like four elbows and press against the fuselage of the aircraft, to the forward and aft sides of the exit door. There are also 'half-tie' restraints which keep the inflating slide from drooping or blowing under the aircraft. These restraints are constructed so that when the slide becomes fairly rigid, around 1.5 - 2.0 psi, they detach very quickly (there are usually two), and since the header tubes are already against the fuselage, the slide 'pops' almost horizontally out from the door, then drops relatively gently to the ground. Tests in 25-knot (46 km/h) cross winds have shown these deployment systems to be very effective. 
    Independent of the inflation system, all slides are equipped with at least one pressure relief device per inflation chamber. This protects the chamber from catastrophic failure due to over pressurizing. (Typically, modern slides are made of at least 2 inflation chambers, and should be able evacuate an aircraft even when one chamber loses all pressure.) 
    All new evacuation slides are tested on a mock-up of an aircraft exit door and filmed prior to being certified as 'airworthy' and delivered to a customer. Also, new units are usually constructed of urethane materials and impregnated or coated with an aluminized coating in order that the slide will survive for a short while even if fire is nearby. Older slides are yellow and made of neoprene/nylon fabric.

*Exempted aircraft 
    Airplanes such as the Embraer 145 family and the Bombardier CRJ family do not have escape slides because all exits are a safe distance from the ground (less than 6'). On the primary entrance door, 1L, some of these aircraft have stairs that are either connected to the door or drop down.

Rising 10 1/2' into the air, this is the backyard inflatable water park with a tunnel slide that passes beneath a larger traditional slide, both of which are constantly irrigated by built-in sprinklers and have splash pools at the end of each, making it ideal for summer fun. An included 960-watt electric air blower plugs into AC and inflates the park easily and quickly, keeping it resilient and firm. The 0.3 mm-thick PVC shell will withstand years of play, and resists mold and fading. Eight 18"-long stakes firmly secure the park to the ground; four additional stakes keep the air blower and air hose rigidly fixed in one place. Four water bags affix to the side of the slide to provide further stabilization. The sprinklers attach to one garden hose, requiring no additional configuration. Ages 5-12. Inflated: 10 1/2' H x 20' L x 6 1/2' W. Deflated: 20" L x 4 1/4" W. (63 lbs.)