If you were a fire chief how much would you trust an initial report that there are no passengers in an aircraft? And if it turned out that the aircraft was destroyed unnecessarily, or the gate put out of commission long-term due to the lack of an adequate response, or the burning aircraft set fire to adjacent aircraft... you'd wish that you'd sent the whole fire crew.

If you doubled the size of the fire crew, would this prevent you from sending all of them to the same incident? It would be difficult to make the decision not to do so, if they were available.

The decision to send the whole crew seems to me the only reasonable one. After they had started tending to the fire and had more of a view as to how serious it was, perhaps they could have been taken back and the airport reopened sooner. To me this seems the only possible area for improvement.

Nose dive?
 

Ye Olde Pilot, a share price that goes from $107.50 down to $100, recovers to $104 then settles at $102 isn't exactly a great day on Wall Street - but it's no nose dive.

@Romasik:

Surely, this was meant as a joke!

The timing of the fire, and location of the visible damage, might be consistent with an unextinguished cigarette having smoldered among other inflammable materials (for example, linens in the crew rest compartment).

When a 787 has all its turbomachinery stopped, and is not hooked up to a ground cart, how "much electricity" does it have?

On ET B787, there is NO rear cabin rest area apparantly.
Can anyone confirm?

Not sure how accurate this info may be?

I fail to see why it being prepared to be towed is extremely suspicious, at least in the sense of foul play although I'm sure that will be thoroughly investigated. Don't know anything about the 787, but if they were prepping to tow, it seems like a least some of the systems were powered up. Aren't the brakes electric? If so and they had someone preparing to be a brake rider in the cockpit wouldn't some sort of electric power have to be on for the brakes to be operated?

composite repair
 

my guess is 4 to 6 weeks for repair

fyi added info

http://www.niar.wichita.edu/chicagow...ance%20-%20Fawcett%20&%20Oakes.pdf

Wearing my other hat as a bush fire fighter in Western Oz the policy of my Shire is to throw everything at the first report of a fire. Once it has been determined what the fire is then units not required can be turned back. However, everyone starts rolling. That way small fires don't become big fires.

On the other hand the neighbouring Shire policy is to send one unit out to check the fire report and call for additional units as required.

I'll give you one guess as to which Shire has had more out of control bush fires which require not only their own units to attend but a significant portion of neighbouring Shire units?

Anybody know how the fire was actually extinguished.
Did they have to use foam/water internally. I would have thought that using foam/water externally would only cool the skin but not effectively contain an internal fire.

Unconfirmed from somebody at LHR - Fire is strongly believed to be as a result of galley overheat - failure of coffee heater trip switch which was left on.Burnt out much of the galley and area above causing deep damage to aft bh and rudder/elevator system

Really - and your expert analysis was based upon?

If there is heat damage to the composite shell, it may be a hull loss.

aog repair
 

12 years of AOG REPAIRS on widebody boeing a/p

I take it that you have completed a detailed damage assessment of the aircraft in question in order to come to such a precise repair duration estimate and thus are able to provide deeper insights to all those here who are merely conjecturing about the cause of this fire plus the amount of damage to the hull/fuselage?

Caco... Based on seacat001 moniker and location, you could be very off base in your innuendo. Think Everett, home of the 787. Find Mulkiteo on the map.

No innuendo at all. Just a reasonable question of somebody who has experience of repairing composites.

Curious, does the 787 have an avionics rack in the ceiling in front of the fin to house one of its two FDR/EAFR's? One in the front of the aircraft and a second at the back somewhere. I notice that's where the 777 FDR lives and thought the 787 could use a similar "survivable" location? If so it simply means electrical equipment lives near where the burn damage evident and this could be related.

What's the likelihood of this aircraft written off?

Now that is interesting .
In all (old) a/c I flew/still fly there is a master battery switch which is supposed to disable all these, and which you are supposed to use when you park and leave the aircraft. Is the 787 different ? or is it normal to leave power in the galley when long term parked on a modern large aircraft ?

I don't believe that coffee heater can be supplied from battery. If APU/GPU was not connected, I suppose that 115/235V AC buses were without power. Can anybody tell a exact location of remote power distribution unit (see fgure 3)?
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...7_article2.pdf

ATC I also fly an auld heap which not only do we turn the master switch off but we also pull the CB isolating the battery bus.

Was in one European airport on a charter and after putting it away for the night and walking out wondered why all the aircraft on the stands had there NAV lights on with nobody in them.

Phone off and hotel found.

Next day when phone got turned on 20-30 missed calls telling me to go back and turn the NAV lights on because local safety procedures state that aircraft on stand need to have there NAV lights turned on all the time. They got right stroppy about it even when pointed out that it would mean that a diesel GPU would have had to be running all night as we were DC ground power. And night regulations stated that it could only be run for 10mins for start. Bit of a catch22.

ATR's are the same I believe with live circuits even when master switch off and GPU plugged in and live.

Seems a bit daft to be honest to me but can understand with these big fancy machines keeping power on may speed up bring them on line from a cold condition.

REAL KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED
 

Sometimes, just sometimes, someone with an insight can indicate the likely cause of an occurrence, but it is instructive to read the rumour!

Is there an engineer among the forum with knowledge of the 787 who can describe what avionics, systems, accommodation, lies beneath the damage skin? Then the theories might have more relevance.

@Karel_x:

This, from the New York Times (emphasis added):

This make the comments from ATC Watcher and mad_jock especially relevant.

What is the usual electric power configuration established by the crew when they leave the airplane? What are the airline's procedures for this? Did the flight / cleaning / maintenance crews adhere to the procedures?

My "common sense" take is that the cautious course would be to disable all galley power when people aren't on board.

composite repair
 

"my guess is 4 to 6 weeks for repair"

I'd say more like at least 4 to 6 months for a permanent repair.

Ground pwr attached, galley pwr left on, rear water heater left on boiled dry and overheated. electronic CB didnt do its job. end of.

Some very interesting post plus the usual rubbish

Re fire fighting

LHR response team made absolutely the right call in closing the airport, this a wide body jet and the fire service would have had little or no idea what they were dealing with when someone hit the crash bell, was it empty or full of pax & fuel, if this fire had taken hold, well one only has to look at other similar ground fires!!!

If the aircraft was being prepared for service, then its likely that battery masters were on and ground service buss powered, so power to the galley's would be available, perhaps the ground crew decide to make a brew or warm their bacon buttie's up? so oven fire, IFE short circuit? guess the HF stuff is up in the roof area, an IFE short should trip the power off an oven fire might not or someone (cleaner?) having a crafty fag......

Hopefully we will know before the markets open on Monday

Components location
 

There has been asked if the HF components are in the fire accident area. the answer is NO. The antenna for the HF Is a part of the LE of the vertical stabilizer , behind the antenna in the stabilizer is the couplers . then antenna receivers are located in the sidewall of the aft cargo .
In the burned area are part from one of the ELTs ,are several RPDUs ( remote power distribution unit.) power junctions for various systems and also the zonal dryer for the Airco system.

But if power was off non of these units have power

wings1011

The 787 has electric brakes. I believe that the aircraft was being prepared for towing (from earlier posts). Could you please tell me what power source would be used for towing? Surely they would not have relied on battery power to operate the brakes?

Mad Jock
Even the good old 1-11 had the Nav lights run from the Batt Bus so they could be on with all power and battery switch to the off position.

Acouple of points, if the aircraft had been sitting for approx 8 hours unpowered, I would have thought 1600 was a bit early to get this aircraft ready for a 2100 departure considering the terminal restraints at LHR.
Secondly, galleys and coffee makers work off 115v not 28v so there would have been no power for them even if the battery had been left on.

Depends if the A/C was cleaned on arrival or was being done before its move to the departure stand.

Also at LHR some of the galley loading / fuelling is done off stand to reduce the time needed on stand. When these jobs are done is in part dictated by ground staff workload.

These issues could well lead to preparation work going on at 16:00 for a 21:00 departure.

I fail to see why it being prepared to be towed is extremely suspicious, at least in
 

almost all the systems on the 787 are electric thus require li-ion battery that can handle high discharge. aircon, brakes, flight controls, ife, hydraulics are electric

pretty much the whole airplane runs on electricity

Boeing's response
 

One interesting aspect of this incident is that Boeing have so far made no statement, except to say the fire is under investigation (as if we didn't know that!). They must already have a rough idea of what happened — even if the precise cause is not established.

Bearing in the mind the history of this type, it would be sensible PR to at least rule out any link with the batteries. And if the fire is down to serious human error (ie no fault with the a/c) it should also be possible to compose a statement which would imply this. Saying nothing suggests to me there could be some new electrical issue here. Surely this is not about one faulty breaker?

Hull loss......no way !
 

Those of you who think that this is a hull loss are very wide of the mark as it looks to me as if this is quite a simple repair.

The 6 to 8 weeks quoted above seems reasonable but largely depends not on the structural repair but what has to be removed and refitted to get access to the area.

My fear is that Boeing are going to revert to metalcentric repair techniques and end up with a heavy & draggy patch and bolt repair rather than a much neater and lighter composite technique repair that will only increase the structural weight by a small amount and not result in the modification of the external profile of the aircraft

Power source brakes
 

Yes the brakes requires battery power to work , if no other source is available , ie ext power or Apu. In case of towing the fwd battery ( main) will be used as pwr source to release and apply the brakes, if batteries for instance are removed from the aircraft with brakes set to on, the brakes cannot be released until ext pwr or Apu are available. The brakes are electro mechanically operated . The aft battery( Apu batt) can also be used to pwr the navigation lights for towing if no other pwr source is available , ie broken Apu or not want to start it.
That's how the system is set up to able towing with lights partly on and Apu off. Captains radio is powered by batt ( fwd) so radio ca be used if needed to tow with Apu off

Anyone got a modern car? Most of you probably and they are very reliable.
If it goes wrong at all it won't generally be a disaster within the engine/gearbox or structure.
It'll be a crappy bit of plastic somewhere in the electrics that'll stop you driving the thing until you get the bit of tat replaced.
Perhaps we are talking along the same lines here and we will no doubt find out before too long.

Avherald.com

The aircraft fire is unrelated to the batteries. This will be confirmed tomorrow in a boeing press conference. Fire is strongly believed to be as a result of galley overheat - failure of coffee heater trip switch which was left on.Burnt out much of the galley and area above causing deep damage to aft bh and rudder/elevator system. Aircraft sadly a write off - unless pride of hull loss/p.r dictates repair even if economically un-viable."

Wings1011

Many Thanks. Very informative.

That's ver interesting Wings. How long can you tow it for before you need ext pwr/APU on? Would have thought brakes would eat up the juice fairly quickly, especially if the guy/girl in the tug is too "enthusiastic"

All the battery/brake issues were discussed at length in the Tech log thread.