Good article, and it doesn't matter that it wasn't written yesterday.

My usual response to talks about onboard fires is that there's nothing better than the smell of smoke in the cockpit, but that has to be qualified by noting that I've spent a good deal of my career fighting fires from the air, so smoke in the cockpit is also the smell of money.

I've had several on board fires over the years; Janitrol heaters twice, a burning hydraulic pump once, and engine oil from a failed engine component on a large radial. The heaters were put out manually, using a nomex jacket to smother the fire as well as stopping the fuel. The oil went out as the supply stopped with shutdown. The hydraulic pump, however, did not.

In the case of the hydraulic pump, it was a single engine turbine aircraft, and in the time it took to make an overhead at the runway, over the numbers, until touchdown, the cockpit went from a trace scent of burning insulation to a cockpit full of smoke. On the rollout, by midfield I couldn't read the instruments. Point is, it went fast, as fires do. The rule of thumb is that a fire doubles in size every 60 seconds, though the acceleration isn't linear. There are no guarantees that adequate time exists, and there's a good chance that it's not long. Getting to the ground and getting out is critical.

Just as the article notes that descent increases fire behavior, once on the ground venting the aircraft does, too. Every door that's opened will increase fire behavior, and also change the direction that the fire moves. Anyone that's ever blown on a campfire understands why.

I've been doing fire in one capacity or another much of my adult life and the one solitary piece of advice I can give, when it comes to fire, is that there is no such thing as a false alarm. Every firearm is loaded, and every fire alert should be taken seriously. Very, very seriously.