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

Any chance they will hold these shippers legally accountable?

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.

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.

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.


IIRC Lithium batteries produce their own Oxygen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?