PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Palma Fire crew, little too keen?
View Single Post
Old 19th Oct 2007, 23:54
  #44 (permalink)  
con-pilot

Aviator Extraordinaire
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA
Age: 76
Posts: 2,394
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Naw, it is airport fire folks everywhere.

Dobbins AFB Atlanta, Georgia a few years ago. I landed a 727 with brand new brakes. Runway was wet. After we were parked and I shut down the engines the FE went down the aft airstair, per procedure, I noticed that the transit alert crew were running around the aircraft pointing to rear of the aircraft and talking on their radios. Then I saw the fire units leaving their building and heading toward us.

About that time the tower called and told me that both main gears were on fire. Basically I replied, "Say What!" The FE (who was a 72 PIC as well) came back into the cockpit then and said that the new brakes were smoking (very normal) but that he couldn't convince the people on the ground that we were not on fire.

By the time he and I got out of the aircraft we were surrounded by really big Air Force Crash/fire trucks. All the fire suppression foam nozzles were pointed at the main gear and other firemen were unrolling hoses from the truck. I grabbed the closest transit alert guy and told him to tell the fire trucks not to spray the foam until I gave the word. He was jumping around and yelling that we needed to evacuate the aircraft.

Yeah, right, I'm going to let a 100 some prisoners run off the aircraft for smoking brakes. There was a lot of smoke coming from the brakes but obviously no flames. As I was the one who landed I knew that I had not used the brakes very much; the parking area was at the end of a very long runway.

I finally had to walk up to the main gear and put my hand on the brake housing to prove that it was not on fire. Yes, I checked for heat before I did.

The guys in the crash trucks were annoyed that they were not allowed to bury the 727 in foam.

However, giving credit where credit is due, shortly after my incident a advanced prototype of the C-130 crashed during a high speed taxi test, it became airborne and crashed in the parking lot of the base hospital killing all on-board. Some of the fire personal were watching the test and realized that the C-130 was going to crash and they sounded the alarm before the 130 actually crashed. A job well done.

(Normally there is at least one crash/fire truck on alert near the runway during test flights, however, as this was not supposed to a flight no one was on alert.)
con-pilot is offline