Wizz,
Sounds the same as the bus.. First we cut of the ventilation and then discharge the agent into the hold.
It just surprised me that some posters seem to hold the opinion that light on = smoke and light off = no smoke.
I'm surprised we don't get more spurious warning TBH, the amount of times I have had to be evacuated from a hotel because someone was putting on their Lynx in the vicinity of an optical smoke detector.......
This is where the use of all available resources comes in.. Keeping a eye on the hold temperature does help to confirm / disprove the warning.
I'm curious what halon wold look like when discharged into the hold? Many people advocate the use of a camera in the hold.. But having never seen halon discharged in a confined sealed space.. I'm not sure if that would look like smoke on CCTV?
GS.. I agree with your comments. I will be very interested when the VS report is issued who initiated the evacuation, at this stage we don't know if it was a cabin initiated evacuation by either cabin crew or passengers.
Trouble is.. If the passengers had got wind about a possible fire in the hold, I'm sure they would of been very difficult to control.
Having said that the reports of the cabin crew "screaming like a banshee" seem to indicate they were ordered or defaulted to a full evacuation.
Last edited by PT6A; 23rd Apr 2012 at 12:39.