An12 fire at EDDP

[Tu.114]

At Leipzig airport, at around 0000z, an Ukrainian-operated parked An-12 loaded with day-old chicks caught fire and burned out completely. The crew of 7 is safe.

Link in German language (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/flughafen-leipzig-halle-antonow-a12-ausgebrannt-a-915631.html)

http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-530398-breitwandaufmacher-enon.jpg

[BOAC]

Day-old chicks, if crammed together, can overheat significantly and have been known to cook themselves. Whether the heat could cause a fire I do not know.

[Agaricus bisporus]

You'd need a pretty powerful heater to keep chicks alive in an unpressurised hold. That must be a bodge!

[Kerosene Kraut]

Looks like it happened when they started up their no. 2 engine with nos. 1 and 4 already running.

[hailstone]

reports in german media are stating close to 49.000 day-old chicks

[20milesout]

The moment of the explosion, according to German TV (http://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/flugzeugbrand-leipzig-halle100_zc-e9a9d57e_zs-6c4417e7.html):

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/7z8q1.jpg
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/7z8q1.jpg"

[acutabove007]

Being a bit if a novice with gas turbine engines, what exactly exploaded? I would assume it would be part of the turbine? But I don't know enough about these Russian made turboprop engine.

Moreover I think it's a little sad that all those chicks died due to an engine fire, whereas had they been human, all efforts would have been to preserve life and get them out....

[mitrosft]

acutabove007

Day-old chicks release a lot of minute feathers, which in crammed conditions may even ignite ( as flour ). Never happend though, but feasible.

As for comparison between chick-saving vs human-saving efforts: AN-12 may get up to 50 PAX on legs who can evacuate in 50 seconds via ramp, unloading 1000 crates of chicken is two-hour job for maximum 10 workers (done that myself for IL-76).

[uffington sb]

acutabove.
The video shown on German TV seems to show it started in the hold not the engines. The video is no longer there, but the still on 20miles out post gives some idea.

[ATC Watcher]

Does someone has the destination ? From my suspicious old days , such a/c departing from small airports in middle of the night towards the south not always carried what they said on the manifest...
I doubt than one-day chicks eplode themselves, but that the heat they produced detonated something else carried in there, ...:cool:

[SMT Member]

ATC

Don't think it's fair to label LEJ as a 'small airport', particularly not when it comes to freight. It's the main hub of DHL in Europe, it houses a large LHC logistics centre, is the base for NATO's An-124 support fleet and has a regular influx of US passenger carriers loaded with soldiers transitioning on their way to hot and sandy places.

Besides that, it's Germany FFS - you don't even get to let one rip without having to fill in 3 forms in 5 copies.

[wozzo]

Does someone has the destination ? From my suspicious old days , such a/c departing from small airports in middle of the night towards the south not always carried what they said on the manifest...
I doubt than one-day chicks eplode themselves, but that the heat they produced detonated something else carried in there, ...:cool:

Leipzig is second largest cargo hub in Germany, destination was Mineralny Vody in Russia. And yes, I doubt, too, that someone would choose Leipzig to smuggle something nefarious on a larger scale.

[ATC Watcher]

Wozzo and SMT, point taken, especially if the flight was going east.
It was my suspicious mind again ....:\

[Tu.114]

Also, about half of the day-old chickens produced are immediately destroyed because they are male and therefore not likely to lay eggs. The chicken-producing industry has many practices one would rather not think about; to sum it up, it is not nearly about maximizing the ratio of meat produced vs. chicks hatched.

But getting back to the An-12. It seems that the AI-20M engines are started via 2 electric starter generators as seen here:
http://www.enginehistory.org/Museums/SovietGasTurbines/AI-20M_05.jpg

Speculating a bit here - a possible scenario explaining a fire in the fuselage right during engine startup might be an electric failure somewhere in the cables running between the already running engines providing the power and the just starting engine?

[Agaricus bisporus]

The APU is in the portside maingear fairing isn't it? That flash isn't necessarily from an engine?

AS for heat from the chicks causing something to ignite!!! Hilarious!

edit; having seen the TV footage the fire certainly seems centred on the portside lower fuselage and not the engine.

[20milesout]

Agaricus,
affirm regarding the APU and this was exactly my first thought. The screenshot may be misleading, still the lower port fuselage is the area the BFU is surely investigating thoroughly right now.
On a side note, the ill-fated (big) bird is now confirmed being UR-CAG.

edit:
APU position on the AN-12. These aicraft operate into places with poor to no infracstructure regularly, thus making frequent use of their onboard powerplant, as you can tell by the heavy sooting on this fuselage:

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/pn975http://oi43.tinypic.com/2jbns3n.jpg

(Original photo photo by Markus Guntli @ eastwings)
http://www.pprune.org/www.freeimagehosting.net/t/pn975.jpg