How many times have we done this at recurrent, regardless of type, make or model???
Over water, in the dark with a lot of fuel. Hurtling along through space in a giant aluminum and plastic tube filled with flammable insulation and miles of electrical cables. Everything, with the exception of the engines and flight controls need those pesky electrons. Whether from the batteries or generators or alternators, in older jets. Mr. Murphy shows up. Do you smell something? Yeah, smells like burning wires. Get out the checklist. What does it say? Gang bar and start turning everything off, pull circuit breakers. Now it’s dark and the flashlights are all you’ve got.
Captain takes the stick/yoke, FO runs the checklist.
Now you wait. Still smell the smoke? Roger. Batteries back on.Now you get a few things back. Check the voltage. Voltage is normal. Wait. Still smell smoke? Yup. And on through the checklist, trying to isolate the culprit. Worse case scenario: Can’t get the fire out. Everything is gone, no nav, no autopilot, no transponder, no radios and you’re hand flying, battery voltage is dropping. Molten aluminum is raining in the cockpit (Swissair 111) Trying to maintain altitude and heading. Smoke is getting pretty thick, O2 is depleted, she’s trimmed up as good as possible. Cough, cough, now you’re dead. Engines keep running, no one at the controls, now it’s either fire gets to the fuel and BANG, little sparkles fall from the sky, or kerplunk, into the drink and maybe a few larger pieces….
Or, the fat boy from North Korea was playing with his new drone...