So, you have an engine fire, do you do the classic, or do you leave flap alone, 80 degree course reversal, and land reciprocal as soon as poss? We are all coming round to the thought now that with a fire, every minute you save could save you.
One of the sequences in the simulator (737) was a simulated severe cabin fire ar VR and a close-in low level circuit - the object being to land back on the duty runway into wind with minimum delay. Times varied with pilot handling skill and were generally between two and three minutes from lift off, tight left hand circuit and stop. Best times were one minute and fifty seconds.
While considered a "fun" exercise simply because it wasn't in any syllabus we were aware of, nevertheless there was a deadly serious side to it.
We tried the dumbell 80/260 turn to land on the reciprocal of the departure runway but the tailwind component and loss of sight of the runway environment during a large part of the manoeuvre made for a difficult exercise. A tight left hand low level circuit to land into wind as per take off, proved to be the safest (?) method.
I understand that El Airline now incorporates this manoeuvre as part of command upgrade training. In the El Al 737-800, the best time via low level left circuit was one minute and thirty seven seconds from lift off to stop.