Qantas in midair emergency as pilots grapple with two coughpit fires

[reductionist]

Qantas in midair emergency as pilots grapple with two coughpit fires

PASSENGERS on a Qantas flight from the Philippines to Sydney yesterday were left terrified after pilots had to put out an electrical fire in the coughpit and the plane was forced to land in Cairns.

 

[Nigelinoz]

Sounds like the pilots handled the situation professionally and calmly,which is what we have come to expect from Qantas crew,important thing is the plane landed safely and everyone is ok.
Cheers
N;oz
Edited to add: Interestingly it appears that the SMH got one factor quite wrong-according to the Syd message board the incident occured about 12 hours previously to that reported -it was 4.00AM not 3.35PM.
http://yssyforum.net/board/showthread.php?p=58003#post58003

 

[QF WP]

Maybe that will be a new episode of Air Crash Investigation. Great to see all that training kick in


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[russ]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

 

[SamR]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

Maybe not if you were putting out a fire in a waste paper basket in your office. But doing that and flying a plane at the same time, being responsible for the safety of all those people, making sure it didn't escalate... yeah, I'd be reasonably impressed.

 

[holdenvxman]

Didn't something like this happen with a jet* plane a while back. Think it was a 332

 

[Major]

Not a great fan of QA but well done to the crew and all concerned. a good outcome.

 

[Nigelinoz]

Didn't something like this happen with a jet* plane a while back. Think it was a 332

Yep,it's referred to in the article.

Qantas said the blaze was caused by an electrical problem in the system that heats the windscreen, the same fault that forced a Jetstar A330-200 en route from Japan to Australia to land on the Pacific island of Guam in 2009.

 

[markis10]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

You do realise that fire extinguishers on planes are BCF based that essentially work by taking away the oxygen, so its a bit more involved than point and shoot, not forgetting the need to fly a plane, communicate with ATC/Ops and also establish that you have the fault covered in the first place. The history of inflight fires is not a happy one.

 

[NM]

If you read through Aviation Herald reports you will find that diversions due to smoke in the coughpit is more common than we might like to think. It can be a very serious situation which is why it usually results in a diversion or return to origin (depending on when in the flight it occurs).

 

[mannej]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

Tell that to the families of the UPS 6 crew


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[harvyk]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

because fires + planes oftan = death...

As others have said it's not like they could simply evacuate the plane and wait for the firies to come deal with it... They have to deal with it and keep the plane in the air at the same time...

 

[mannej]

EBL has been in the wars lately. The RTO in PER and now the coughpit fire.

It seems that the heating element (if this was the case) has caused problems for both Boeing (757?) and Airbus equipment.

As others have said, fire is not a friend to any aircraft. Air Canada, Swiss Air and South African (along with UPS) are all examples of what fire can do.

It would be interesting to see if any of our pilot friends on here have experienced fire whilst up in the air, and what the experience was like.

 

[samiam]

Why the pilot worship? Surely it doesn't take much to operate a fire extinguisher.

Surely all you need is two hands and someone to pull the pin?

 

[Sprucegoose]

You do realise that fire extinguishers on planes are BCF based that essentially work by taking away the oxygen, so its a bit more involved than point and shoot, not forgetting the need to fly a plane, communicate with ATC/Ops and also establish that you have the fault covered in the first place. The history of inflight fires is not a happy one.

Wasn't the big one Swiss MD11 off Newfoundland where the entertainment system went up, as shown on air crash investigations.

 

[QF WP]

Yes it was, but by the time the fire was discovered in the flight deck, it probably was already too late, as the fire had already started to melt all the wiring required to fly the plane, if my recollection is correct


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[jb747]

Surely all you need is two hands and someone to pull the pin?

Which will have a total of no effect, unless you've removed the original source of the heat. Which may be easy, if you can isolate where it's coming from, but if you can't, might be truly problematic.

 

[QF WP]

Nicely put jb747 - spoken like somebody who actually knows something about their use

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Wasn't the big one Swiss MD11 off Newfoundland where the entertainment system went up, as shown on air crash investigations.

Yep. It's on Air Crash Investigators too.
Terrible incident that one

[video=youtube;ydis5RQZWuE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydis5RQZWuE[/video]

[video=youtube;BlMv7QsoV3A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlMv7QsoV3A&feature=related[/video]