Fire truck PER

[SkySista]

Was at the airport tonight, a DJ flight came in followed down the runway after the intersection by a fire rig with lights going. Trailed him to apron then went home. Once plane had parked, ground crew did a walkaround using a torch, seemed to be focusing on the nose wheel well.

I thought maybe they'd had a false brake fire/overheat indication. Anyone know what was going on?

Thanks

SS

[Continental-520]

Hmmm... I didn't think the nose wheel had brakes...do they? How else could a fire in the nose wheel well develop?

520.

[SkySista]

520,

I think you may be right.

you've just proved my total absence of brain when writing that post - then again, it was late here!!! :O

I don't profess to know that much about 737s, but it seems logical there'd be no brakes on a nose wheel.

Just figured they'd had some sort of tyre/wheel problem, crew obviously knew about it as fire truck was ready and waiting when they landed.

I thought maybe they'd had unsafe/undeployed gear ind, but isn't the usual procedure to do a flypast so tower crew can get a visual?

SS

[dogcharlietree]

What do you sand groppers know about the B727 freighter touching down at Perth to the sounds of silence, apparently after 3 approaches (mentioned in another thread)?
Any details?

[Tagneah]

You are right guys, there is no brakes and therefore no fire detection on the nosewheel. In fact we have no brake temp indication at all on the 737, and only the wheel well has a single loop fire detection system. We derive min turnaround time from the QRH by going into numerous tables.

I can only guess that on this occasion the crew felt some nosewheel vibration after 80 kts on their departure or just after rotation. They probably felt that this may have been attributed to a tire delaminating hence the fire truck and the attention to the nosewheel by the engineering types. Hope this helps.

Tag

[SkySista]

Sounds logical.... better be safe than sorry I say

I was never sure whether they had indicators on the nose wheel. Thanks for clearing that up.

Unless of course they just really really wanted to get home for a beer!!!!! :p

SS