Originally Posted by
tdracer
Why do you think ETOPS is relevant? If you have an uncontrolled cabin fire and you're 180 minutes from an airport, I don't think having more than two engines is going to make much difference...
:
td, it was fire suppression for the underfloor compartments that I had in mind.
The aircraft is almost beyond doubt operated i.a.w. 180 (or more!) rules, where cargo fire is an assessed, and acceptable hazard. Various clever and well-minding people, together with multiple regulators agree that fire going off in the cargo hold is severely survivable on this machine. If you can produce a workable scenario how to land inside 3 hours flying time after the eventuality, you're good to go.
Then, a story appears that an identical aircraft diverted due to a cellphone battery going ablaze in the middle of the PAX compartment. I do have high degrees of trust that
- LH KLM skipper knows how to evaluate the risk
- KLM OPS have all the resources and training to assist with taking the optimal decision (which is a safe one by definition)
- KLM CC are trained to the world's best standard how to handle small PED fires
- as pointed out before, there actually might have been several real tin buckets available to drown the device (that's the gist of the procedure)
That's where I cannot connect the dots. An approved, and well established 180 ETOPS operation - as opposed to a T7 diverting because of a small accumulator fire - AS REPORTED. Had it happened half-way over the Atlantic, surely they wouldn't had burned in the midair.
Should I said LROPS, yes.