Originally Posted by
MOSTAFA
Spot on SND. Often wondered why we don’t emphasise the first line of any ECL/EOP come FRC drill with “I SURVIVE” (Airmanship) My outstanding BRW instructor (John Yates RN/Bristows) taught me that many years ago.
Just on SND's point about fire drill, one needs to contemplate the "why?"s. You have 2 extinguishers and 1 fire. If you use one extinguisher it may put the fire out. In which case you have another extinguisher available for another fire. But just how likely is that?
If you use one extinguisher that knocks the fire back but doesn't quite put it out, and then wait, the fire re-establishes itself. You then use the second extinguisher which not surprisingly has the same effect as the first and you are still on fire.
On the other hand if you hit the second bottle pretty quickly before the fire has a chance to re-establish you are maximising the chances of putting the fire out. Ok you then have no more bottles but surely dealing with the fire you have is more important than trying to keep a spare bottle for the fire you don't yet have?
So this is the sort of area where one has to be careful if going against the RFM. You are just guessing that 30 secs is optimal for that engine installation. Whereas the manufacturer has probably done some much more robust study to come up with the 10 secs.
All that said in some cases the RFM procedure can be badly written, not written well for the aircraft's role etc, or plain wrong, and personally I think there can be times when one should deviate from the RFM when writing the EOPs. You have to be pretty sure of your ground though! More recently, and depending on the individual FOI, you may struggle to be allowed to have EOPs that deviate from the RFM. Years ago RFMs used to say that only the limitations section was mandatory but recently, certainly in the case of AH, there are statements in the RFM mandating the Emergency Procedures section too. Which is a shame!