BA 777 fire at las vegas

statistically

The statistician who couldn’t swim confidently waded into the wide river that was on average half a metre deep. He drowned.

The NTSB are asking themselves the same questions and will of course come up with the answers.

Rather than speculate it would be prudent to wait for more detailed and comprehensive reporting from the NTSB along with the contributions from the FAA, Boeing and GE

Reading that begs a question. How can that engine suffer an uncontained compressor failure? If an engine is not capable of containing the failure of a component, the component must be built so strong that it statistically cannot fail… A short precis of the good book.
Begs another question, what caused the failure then, manufacture or servicing?

The preliminary NTSB report was made public yesterday http://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/PR20150910.aspx

These are some of the key points in that report –

“* The flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and quick access recorder have arrived at the NTSB Vehicle Recorder Laboratory and are currently being downloaded.

* On Tuesday evening, the airplane was photographed and the runway debris documented by FAA and airport officials before airplane was towed to secluded area of the airport (in order to reopen the runway).

* Initial examination of the left engine revealed multiple breaches of the engine case in the area around the high pressure compressor.

* Examination of the material recovered from runway found several pieces of the high pressure compressor spool (approximately 7-8 inches in length).

* Initial examination of the airplane by NTSB revealed that the left engine and pylon, left fuselage structure and inboard left wing airplane were substantially damaged by the fire. This damage will be documented over the next several days.”

The madness of in-cabin baggage has to come to an halt.

With frequent delay due to weather and loss of time due to airport security, the iconic excuse of not loosing time at arrival is beyond any ridicule. Those are the age of Tartuffe for airline travel.

For the ViP cabin, overhead bin should be locked until (a safe) arrival and additional storage provided for small size hand-bags and flat suitcases that typically hold one person private items (laptop, documents etc..). For other travelers, no suitcase at all. Only hand bags, small back-packs and laptops.

You don’t need to save your last lot of shirts and ties in case of an emergency fire.

Sort and part, should be the way to go.

Now, regarding the engine fire, do we have any clue? The billowing smoke is really thick and grey.

British Airways blaze pilot: ‘I’m finished flying’

BBC News

Let us remember the British Airtours disaster at Manchester in 1985, which had a similar rejected takeoff but with a high number of fatalities. Maybe some of those pax who carried their luggage off should be reminded of it as well.

I doubt there would have been any suitcases in the passenger cabin ?

Given the size of some “cabin bags” I saw being squeezed into the overhead lockers of a BA A319 recently, some cabin bags do seem to warrant the term “Suitcase”!

But regardless of that, what possesses people to put their possessions before their own personal safety – instinctively grabbing a handbag (for ladies of course 😉 ), or grabbing your passport/phone or even a sweater/jacket/laptop off the seat next to you, or from under your feet is one thing, but deliberately stopping to open a locker, reach up to grab your bag, then man-handling it down the cabin is beyond me….

I guess that as soon as one passenger does it a number of others will follow suit… and the cabin crew will be more concerned about getting pax down the slide quickly than standing and arguing with, or trying to forcibly remove bags from, the inconsiderates.

Personally I’d like to see stewards grab such bags off pax and throw them (the bags, not the pax!) to one side of the chute (all in the name of preventing damage to the emergency slide of course 😉 )…but I suppose that would risk falling bags hitting any pax who may already have gone down the slide and be wandering around in a state of shock/fear/confusion beneath the door….

This brought a smile to my face. Maybe not too far from the truth though ?

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I doubt there would have been any suitcases in the passenger cabin ?

In their defence: As the aircraft was a little over half full, there would have probably been space to have brief cases and
laptops on the empty seat next to you. (if that is allowed for take off ?)

At what point would someone think its a good idea to take their suitcase with them down an escape slide from a burning aircraft! common sense must be a thing of the past. And well done to all the flight crew.

Some idiots were taking suitcases down the chute.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34191035

As soon as you’ve got that heat damage to the aircraft structure, coupled with the aircraft age (it’s one of the earlier GE90 deliveries) it’s definitely BER.

Suggested elsewhere that as far as BA insurers are concerned it is beyond economic repair.

No idea if this is fact or fantasy.

Moggy

The a/c is over 16 years old. I’d say that it is a safe bet.

Hats off to the flight crew and cabin crew.

It appears the Captain is on his last few flights before retirement. Another grey-hair pilot repaying the sim hours spent on him. (Chris Henkey is his name from memory of a brief caption on a tele piece with his wife)

Moggy

Suggested elsewhere that as far as BA insurers are concerned it is beyond economic repair.

No idea if this is fact or fantasy.

Moggy

It’s going to be an expensive repair..[ATTACH=CONFIG]240376[/ATTACH]
Thanks to ASN for the pic.

The last thing I would be bothered about would be my laptop and bags. I have seen some more photos on Facebook and it wouldn’t surprise me if it isn’t a write off.

Cracking job by the aircraft crew and the airport emergency services. Pics I’ve seen show they were already on scene putting out the fire whilst passengers were still evacuating.

Add. Some interesting images over on Sky News. Can’t post them here as I don’t have image rights. See http://news.sky.com/story/1549179/catastrophic-engine-failure-causes-ba-jet-fire

It’s good that everyone got away from the a/c. A couple of small injuries I heard (BBC news).
It also ended well here…..
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