It is funny you say that because Baltia did state they did a test for the FAA where they deployed expired slides that were original and never repacked, I believe they said they were manufactured in the 70's and both slides worked flawlessly! The problem seems to be once the slides are opened for inspection and then repacked not to manufactures specific manual guidelines. This is were issues start to arise. Once Baltia realized this, they made the appropriate decision to monitor the repacking for quality assurance. I truely believe that N706BL is probably now the safest and most reliable 747 plane out there for having reliable slides! The other 747's with repacked slides has only a 37% success rate! IMO I feel now Baltia would more then likely have a 99% slide success rate from all the proactive steps taken in mitigating this industry wide issue.
Disclaimer:
