I am not saying that the end result would have been different for me or that my actions would have been any different. However, with the benefit of hindsight and time to calmly think about things and what to do if this happens in the future.....
....while it happened to be batteries this time, it can be and could have been another source for the fire. The crew was not aware of the source at the time. Decisions at the time have to be based on the fact that there is smoke, not what the exact source is which doesn't really matter at that point.
We have known for a long time that fires are bad so land at the nearest suitable airport.
The checklist says to stay at FL250. I am not sure of the point of disregarding it and going to a much lower altitude so early based on the new destination distance. The report says that this may have made the fire worse. It certainly didn't make things better. I suppose one could be thinking that they want to be close to the water in case an immediate ditching is required if things get desperate all of a sudden instead of having to take 10 minutes to descend from FL 250.
I am not sure what the smoke evacuation checklist said at the time but it now says that pulling the smoke evacuation handle which opens a port in the ceiling in the cockpit. This is for when the smoke source is in the cockpit and that if the smoke or fumes source is not on the flight deck, this action may bring the smoke or fumes into the flight deck or increase the amount flowing into the flight deck which appears to be the case here.
The O2 mask on the right side was apparently not set to the 100% mode for departure according to the report. They claim that they can tell by sound analysis(if you believe that). They also seem to feel that it was never set to 100% during the emergency which seems difficult to believe but that is what the report says. If so, it shows the importance of checking that the mask is at 100% on the pre-flight. As well, the continuous flow option was never used. Unfortunately we don't get a lot of opportunity to practice selecting continuous flow in newer aircraft as the mask is stowed in that compartment instead the way it was in the old days with the mask hanging nearby. It can be very handy to practice making that selection whenever one gets the opportunity in the sim as it is done by feel only. This will ensure that no smoke is going in the mask.
The pack 1 failure had to be the worst luck in the world(as it is designed to keep smoke out of the cockpit through a higher pressure level) and happened after the fire warning sounded. Perhaps things were already bad at that point, I'm not sure. But I believe they followed the checklist to manually turn off the other packs. The checklist has subsequently been changed by Boeing.
Last edited by JammedStab; 15th Jul 2015 at 10:45.