Originally Posted by
Blackfriar
And being just 30 seconds behind, if there had been a fire, the foam cannon would have started before they arrived. Look at the video today, foam everywhere but on the fire for at least 30 seconds.
You simply cannot on the basis of videos of the plane in the distance know what transpired with the fire fighting. If there was unburnt spilled fuel, and there probably was, a decision has to be made about smothering that with foam before getting closer to the aircraft, because what you don't want to do is park the tender in a pool of fuel which could catch fire. It is also important for the safety of evacuating passengers who can run anywhere, and who may also have been preventing closer access. Pooling fuel could also be the reason for the third tender spraying foam in areas other than on the aircraft.
As for response time, if fire crews were holding in the taxiway around the middle of the runway, and the aircraft ended up at the end of the runway, they had to travel about 2kms to get to it. Assuming an average speed of 80km/hr, which allows for accelerating and decelerating, the time to the aircraft would be 1 min 30 secs following clearance to enter the runway. If the average speed was 70km/hr, the time taken would be 1:43. And unlike the very controlled video being used for comparison, in an actual fire crews have to slow down to assess the situation and quickly decide on and coordinate a first response strategy under extreme stress. This was probably the fire crew's first real life-threatening passenger aircraft fire, and odds are it will be their last, such is the life of airport fire crews. So perhaps don't presume so much.