Work load during an airborne Smoke, Fumes, Fire event is extremely high. It’s easy to get so focused on the need to get onto the ground quickly that you unintentionally neglect other important safety factors, such as normal checklists and terrain clearance. EGPWS Terrain MAP display helps.
I’ve had one real smoke/fire event, it was Avionics Smoke due to a galley oven fire just after airborne and gear selected up..landed back at the departure airport within 4.5 minutes after a night visual circuit. Molten plastic around the forward galley produced fumes that, with hindsight, made us wish we’d put our O2 masks on. No checklists consulted at all, survival mode kicks in. We didn’t know it was a galley fire until on Final approach (galley air is sucked into the Avionics bay, hence the Avionics Smoke warning).
Simulator scenarios are usually commenced at cruise altitude. Most I’ve experienced result in PF flying single pilot programming the FMC and talking to ATC/Cabin Crew while the PNF attempts to complete the checklist in thick smoke. Unable to see the instruments in front of you or cross check what the other pilot is doing makes for a very high workload and goes against the grain of normal Ops cross checking and SOP’s. Armchair experts on here would benefit from seeing such an exercise.
Last edited by Nightstop; 10th Jan 2022 at 19:46.
Reason: I’ve reached 2,000 posts!