Originally Posted by
sandos
Thats a valiant effort, any idea what sort of exploded? I guess it was something in the tug and not from the aircraft. They were lucky there wasn't a bigger explosion. Thinking oxygen tanks, that could have been interesting.
Same thing happened to me few years ago (funnily enough while towing an A340) and it was a high pressure hydraulic leak spraying on to the hot engine. As it was a towbar and not towbarless tug we were able to disconnect the towbar and let the aircraft roll back under control of the brake rider (luckily the ramp had a slight slope backwards). We couldn't put the fire out either despite best efforts, but luckily no damage to the airframe at all. Believe the tugs (Bliss Fox) were modified after that to have a fire suppression/extinguisher system installed.