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BillyHW
15th Mar 2014, 16:57
Greetings folks.

I'm not a pilot, but I have a question about what firefighting options are available on commercial flights, especially Swissair 111. That is, were there fire extinguishers on board? If so, how many?

Was there any access to the compartments and panels where the fire started or spread? Could they be opened, or was there at least a vent that someone could fire the extinguisher into?

If the one of the pilots and crew had been assigned to grab all the extinguishers onboard the flight and try to put out the fire, or at least slow its spread, would that have bought Swissair 111 a bit more time to land the plane?

Also, were there any other options for putting out the fire or slowing down its spread, like depressurizing the cabin, for instance?

Thank you in advance for any responses.

Mechta
15th Mar 2014, 23:44
Billy HW, Its sounds like you might have been thinking along the same lines as me with regard to Flight MH370.

This describes fire prevention methods on the Boeing 777.

Fire Protection: Passenger Cabin (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2011_q4/4/)

I can't find any MD-11 specific info, but this gives a general decription of requirements:

Rule change: Cargo-compartment Smoke detection & fire Suppression (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_06/textonly/s03txt.html)

I did wonder if the MH370 pilot might have depressurised the aircraft as a last ditch measure against an electrical fire.

Another hypothesis would be a fault in the inerting system, in which a leak in either the nitrogen-enriched air pipe dropped the oxygen level in the aircraft, or a leak in the oxygen-enriched air waste pipe from the air separator increased the local oxygen content to a dangerous level which caused a fire.

llondel
16th Mar 2014, 00:44
The problem with depressurising the aircraft is that the passengers then need oxygen, and that could be a source to fuel the fire, depending on where it was.

BillyHW
16th Mar 2014, 21:20
Well my question was not directly related to MH370. But thank you for the links. Is there anything similar for the cockpit?

It does appear that Swissair 111 did have some firefighting capabilities, if it was anything similar to the Boeings you've provided links to. I wonder why they didn't try to fight the fire more to slow its spread. From what I've read about that disaster, they were mainly concerned with landing but made no serious attempts to fight the fire until it was far too late.