Five fires on Pakistani International Airline jumbo jets at Manchester Airport were caused by faulty maintenance at the airline's Karachi workshops, a report has found. Experts were called into to investigate after the fifth fire in March last year resulted in an emergency evacuation of passengers after the jet, a new Boeing 777, taxied to a standstill.
After a 10 month investigation the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said that some maintenance men in Karachi were clearing heat shields in wheels by submerging them in a bath of flammable solvents even though they had been warned not to do this. This cased the saturated shields to catch fire as the pilot applied the breaks after landing with full loads at Manchester airport.
The report reveals that PIA bosses were aware of the problem as far back as June 2004 when they issued a memo outlawing the practice of using solvent baths for heat shields. But the practice appears to have continued in some cases says the report.
As a result of these findings PIA have undertake a re-training programme of maintenance staff and ordered that heat shields should be steam cleaned from now on.
The report also criticises the crew of the Boeing for acting too slowly in evaluating the 332 passengers. After being warned by fire chiefs that flames were coming from the wheel, and that an immediate evacuation was necessary, the report says the crew took too long getting passengers down the emergency slides because they failed to send them all down in twos.
It says: 'This, together with the apparent lack of a sense of urgency and the fact that some bags were thrown down the slides ahead of passengers, contributed to the long evacuation time of four minutes.'
http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/publicati...er__ap_bgl.cfm