Martinair Gally Fire Diverts to KIAD

[CQ]

Monitored the progress of Martinair's diversion into Washington Dulles last night.
Said they had a fire in the rear Galley. And that there were "big flames" from one of the Ovens. Wasn't particularly impressed with ATC, no response to the Martinair's Pan Pan Pan call. However when the crew said in rather more plain English that they had an emergency on board things started to come together. Despite constant RT traffic on the frequency, they weren't given a dedicated quiet frequency as they had asked for. The crew had to ask several times what runway was in use at Dulles. The dutch crew as one would expect with their excellent command of English sounded very professional and landed safely on Rwy 01L without incident.

[RRAAMJET]

Well done to the crew...

Could start an interesting topic on the use of "PAN,PAN,PAN", which is hardly ever heard here in the States.

The consensus among ATC and Airline crews here is, if you have a problem, declare an EMERGENCY, not a pan, then you'll get the works. Better to have the whole caboodle and discuss it at the bar later.

Yes, I'm from UK and fully aware of the use of Pan calls; and I'm not trying to Monday-morning QB this crew.

[sweeper]

i was taught a long time ago "i can live with the egg on my face, but i would hate to have to go to all those ****ing funerals.
20 years later i had a discussion with an american commander whose version was "i would prefer to discuss this across the big mahogany board table ,than those little mahogany boxes...
declare an emergency,then only the fire chief you have to deal with...works..

[Ignition Override]

Well-done to the Martinair crew. I'm not surprised that they had troubling communicating on saturated ATC frequencies in the eastern US. The Columbian DC-8 or 707 which ran out of fuel near Long Island years ago due to extensive vectoring failed to "declare an emergency". Sometimes even the phrase "min fuel" when beginning a diversion still won't get you a clearance to the filed divert altitude or route: I've experienced this.

Because I've forgotten the 757's systems, does the rear gallery have a power switch that you can easily find and turn off? I'm also curious whether the Halon fire extinguishers had much effect on the fire.

We had a jet make a quick descent and landing at a small airport because of plastic on a bagel in the galley oven-this was just after the Valuejet (now Airtran) tragedy, and the cabin crew smelled the burning plastic.

[Blacksheep]

B757/B767 Utility Bus switches on P5 kill the galleys.

Halon is being withdrawn from cabins and replaced with CO2. Halon gas is no longer manufactured due to environmental treaties and we need all the Halon we can get our hands on to keep the engine extinguishers full. (Existing Halon is recycled; nothing else works quite like Halon on an engine fire)

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Through difficulties to the cinema

[pigboat]

Well, he was there and I wasn't, but he had an onboard fire and didn't initially declare an emergency???

[RATBOY]

as RRAAMJET states you seldom hear PAN on the radio in the US.

Declaring an emergency is the way to go if you have an emergency, all the stops are pulled out and you do whatever you have to do to get the aircraft safely down. Be prepared for a short and one sided conversation if it wasn't justified, however.

[simfly]

I recently heard a student out in Florida call "mayday mayday mayday tyro", which is definately something you hardly ever hear out there! Needless to say, he was doing a JAA PPL.

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The ground won't hurt you, if you hit it hard enough!

[Pengineer]

Bit of confusion here, was it an oven fire or a pan fire? I saw a chip pan going up once it was quite spectacular.
http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/mica/FarSgoof.gif


(Helmet on, incoming)