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UPS 747 Dubai Final Report

Old 07-30-2013, 12:46 AM
  #61  
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A difficult read indeed. I completely agree with landing the aircraft anywhere, immediately. But having only 3 minutes from initial warning to the cockpit being saturated with smoke, it's hard to imagine any crew surviving this, no matter what they did. The report also suggests that a ditching was likely to be unsuccessful.

RIP
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Old 07-30-2013, 04:30 AM
  #62  
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5. Shippers of some of the lithium battery cargo loadedin Hong Kong did not properly declare these shipments and did not provide TestReports in compliance with the UN Recommendations on the Transport of DangerousGoods Manual of Tests and Criteria, Section 38.3, to verify that such these batterydesigns were in conformance with UN Modal Regulations.
Any chance they will hold these shippers legally accountable?
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Old 07-30-2013, 04:40 AM
  #63  
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Some interesting (and grim) questions have been brought forward here.

Over water, nearest concrete 3 hours away - do you ditch? When? Lacking additional information, if the smoke is so thick you can barely see, one must conclude that hull integrity or flight controls may be compromised, and ditching might be preferable to limping along.

How about windows? If possible, go low, depressurize the airplane, and open a window. Would it work? Would you freeze rather than burn?
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Old 07-30-2013, 08:57 AM
  #64  
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Originally Posted by ForeverFO View Post
Some interesting (and grim) questions have been brought forward here.

Over water, nearest concrete 3 hours away - do you ditch? When? Lacking additional information, if the smoke is so thick you can barely see, one must conclude that hull integrity or flight controls may be compromised, and ditching might be preferable to limping along.

How about windows? If possible, go low, depressurize the airplane, and open a window. Would it work? Would you freeze rather than burn?
From a fire behavior standpoint adding high flow air would almost certainly rapidly and catastrophically increase fire spread. Wind driven fires are dangerous entities indeed.

Only a few ways to put out a fire. Remove the heat. Remove the oxygen. Or remove the fuel (whatever is burning)

Staying at altitude and depressurizing may work, unless the materials burning are producing their own oxygen, not uncommon with many dangerous goods.
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Old 07-30-2013, 10:02 AM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by FMI View Post
Attending recurrent, our instructor had placed their portable smoke machine in the sim.
Generally they allow it to puff a couple times then shut it off as we run through the emer descent scenario, nothing new.
This time however, the machine stuck in the full "on" position and within a couple minutes filled the sim so full, I couldn't see my hand in front of my goggles.
We were 0/0, couldn't see the PFD's, MFD, radios.. nothing. We had selected mask and inter-phone from the mem items, but everything to follow was futile at best.
With 25 years of flying professionally, I sat there trying my best to feel around my cockpit in the midst of an emergency descent and couldn't help but think of this crew and what they had to be experiencing. Add to it the heat, stress and frustration of comm relays, etc.
Sim instructor couldn't see anything, we had to shut down and evac the sim.
Ended up setting the smoke alarms off in the sim bay and evacuating the entire building, class rooms and all.
It was an eye opening experience I'll never forget as I sat there doing everything I feasibly could to control my bird.
So, as it has been stated here many times, we must learn from this crew who were in an impossible situation.
Smoke in the cockpit or any sign of an onboard fire, find some pavement "now".
And may we never have to deal with this tragic event.
RIP brothers.
The conditions you're describing, as well as the ones described in the report are an accurate representation of what the environment will be like if you can't get the smoke out of the cockpit. Goggles and masks will keep you breathing, but will do little to allow you to find the controls you need to get back down. The key is, as others have said, get down immediately before smoke conditions become untenable.

My last shift we had a serious house fire, and were in 0 visibility conditions. I could not see my gloves with them on my mask, let alone my partner on the hose line, and he was closer to me than 2 seated crew members in a cockpit. The only way we could move around was by crawling and feeling for things like walls and furniture and could only find the fire by listening for crackling and using my thermal imaging camera. Trying to fly in those conditions is as close to impossible as there is, and it says a tremendous amount about the crew that they worked so hard right to the end. My thoughts are with them and their families and friends.

A working fire in a house doubles in size every 30-60 seconds depending on conditions. I am not aware of what the stats are for an airliner, but ValueJet, Swissair, and now UPS don't paint a picture that is much more optimistic than a building fire.

The lithium battery fire described likely put out CO levels well above what we call the IDLH level (immediately dangerous to life and health). If CO production was above 1200 ppm the captain would have had a severely degraded level of consciousness in just a few seconds, and could have been unresponsive in as little as 30 seconds. It is analogous to the TUC tables in the event of a depressurization at high altitude.
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Old 07-30-2013, 11:40 AM
  #66  
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Originally Posted by ForeverFO View Post
How about windows? If possible, go low, depressurize the airplane, and open a window. Would it work? Would you freeze rather than burn?
The 744 does not have any windows that you can open, just a small smoke vent in the cockpit. If you were really determined, you might be able to depressurize and pull the escape hatch open in flight, but it would probably just turn the flight deck into a chimney and pull the fire into the cockpit faster.


Originally Posted by gdube94 View Post
Only a few ways to put out a fire. Remove the heat. Remove the oxygen. Or remove the fuel (whatever is burning)

Staying at altitude and depressurizing may work, unless the materials burning are producing their own oxygen, not uncommon with many dangerous goods.
IIRC Lithium batteries produce their own Oxygen.
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Old 08-02-2013, 07:02 AM
  #67  
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With any cargo fire; Main Deck, Lower AFT or FWD, each have a specific checklist to complete. None of which calls for pulling the smoke removal handle.

Only an unknown source of smoke/fire would require the Smoke, Fire or Fumes checklist, and from this checklist, if smoke is the greatest threat, would the crew be directed to the smoke removal checklist. Only if the source of the smoke was determined to be from the flight deck, would the crew then pull the smoke removal handle.

For a main deck cargo fire, arming the Main Deck cargo fire switch shuts off two packs (2&3), and E/E switches to closed loop. When the Depress switch is pushed, the cabin depressurizes to 25000', and the aircraft descends or climbs to 25000'.

Not only does this starve the fire, but also maintains zero pressure differential on the main deck, with Pack 1 providing a slight positive pressure for the Upper deck. This logic is what keeps the smoke from the Upper deck. Had pack 1 not tripped, and Pack 3 not been selected OFF(per the checklist at the time), they probably would have had at least a little extra time before the fire/smoke breached the FLT deck.

This is also why the E/E has to go to closed loop, not override like the FWD and AFT lower deck. If override were selected, with no differential pressure, E/E cooling would be lost.
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Old 08-02-2013, 12:13 PM
  #68  
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I have to admit, after experiencing my own in-flight fire/smoke & fumes in the cockpit and after reading about this and other accidents, I fly scared now.

Unless I am very knowledgeable about the area I'm flying over, I routinely check the Alternates page, seeing which airport is closest. Then I load up the airport diagram in the EFB and look at the what approach facilities and runways the airport has.

Since doing this, I've had several Captains ask me what or why I was doing this. And after telling them, they look at me like I'm crazy.
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Old 08-05-2013, 10:27 PM
  #69  
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Originally Posted by cougar View Post
For a main deck cargo fire, arming the Main Deck cargo fire switch shuts off two packs (2&3), and E/E switches to closed loop. When the Depress switch is pushed, the cabin depressurizes to 25000', and the aircraft descends or climbs to 25000'.

Not only does this starve the fire, but also maintains zero pressure differential on the main deck, with Pack 1 providing a slight positive pressure for the Upper deck. This logic is what keeps the smoke from the Upper deck.
Do you agree with this logic, 'cougar', are are you repeating it from somewhere? You speak of 'don't pull the smoke removal handle', 'starve the fire' and 'providing a slight positive pressure for the upper deck'. By the time you become aware you're on fire on a 744 (especially a freighter, where all you've got are particulate detectors), you've likely got an "overwhelming fire". Those aren't my words, those are the words of the report.

Originally Posted by N571UP Final Report
The growth rate of container fires after they become detectable by the aircraft’s smoke detection system can be extremely fast, precluding any mitigating action and resulting in an overwhelming fire.
There's a wonderfully frightening video from the FAA showing what just a single Laptop Lithium Ion Battery fire looks like, and how to fight it (water extinguisher if you got it, Halon and then pour water on it if you don't. About 6:20 in shows what just Halon does - and that's all you got in the lower lobes). If you've got a whole pallet of portable devices, or perhaps a whole plane full if you're flying cargo . . .

Anyone who reads the full report will be the better for it.
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Old 08-16-2013, 12:01 PM
  #70  
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The question is, as worldwide transport of Li-Ion batteries will keep on going strong, and in the meantime as defensive measures are not yet taken, what course of action do you think we should take on receiving a fire alarm on the FWD Cargo for example (without any type of visual or smoke confirmation)? We have been getting many of the 9FZ types lately where you know fire suppresion system won't do anything to help and you have the clock ticking fast in case of a real fire.

However, we are used to seeing many reports of false fire alarms (check avherald.com) that I'm wondering if just plunging in to the nearest piece of concrete (or ditching into the ocean, as mentioned before) to the first fire alarm might be reasonable. I'm not saying to disregard the fire alarm, obviously, but should we ditch in case of remote areas?
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