Fire on ground support equipment @ HKIA
 

A piece of loading equipment caught fire at Hong Kong International Airport next to the plane that was due to to fly from HKG to LAX

My guess is lithium batteries .... its only a matter of time before a pax aircraft goes up in smoke mid pacific. When will they ever learn?

Goes down in smoke mate. Unless the DFO has changed the rules on gravity like everything else.

Yeah and f@ck the freighter apparently. They only carry 130 tonnes of the stuff.

Dear Anna. Obviously our jobs are not as dangerous as sitting in that office of yours. :rolleyes:

Device, went off prematurely....? American Airlines. Suspicious and frightening.

Will Swire have to buy AA a new 777?
No doubt we will somehow have to pay for it.

.....probably....

Every way up it will be settled by insurance and should not appear on the airlines or handling agents bottom line.

Having seen a few scratchy videos, I have this question - What was the ignition source? Did the fire start in the pallet, or did the loader motor overheat and catch fire??

A fire that intense , I very much doubt that it was the motor of the hi loader . It looks more like a fuel leak and resulting fire , but as you say difficult to tell .
Fortunately the aircraft looks okay

Good pictures! PPRuNe Rumors & News discussion of the incident is here: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/6...k-lap-kok.html

Disappointing to see that the driver of the reactor towing the pallet on the dolly about to be loaded decided to just abandon his tractor in situ.
Whatever happened to lateral thought?
Perhaps:
"Holy bbq chicken feet, there's a fire!
Let me tow this pallet out of the way,
then I'll John Wayne it and unhitch it on the move,
then duck around to the back left hand side of the jet,
now I can push the scissor loader away from the airplane shaped fuel bowser.
Yeah I know it'll have the brakes on, but if I hit it hard enough, I might be able to move all that burning **** away from the jet, before it really starts to burn."

Or alternatively, " Ai yaaa....... " heard running off into the distance.

You get what you pay for!

Woujd anyone expect anything different?

The shocker would be if someone (anyone) actually took action.

Come to think of it, that bloke should be seriously considered for upper management.

I think a natural reaction to seeing the pallet go up in flames would be, "Holy s*^t, next will be the explosion", driving the pallet away from the aircraft might be considered above and beyond the call of duty, yes?

Were there Pax on board?
Was a headset connected?
If so, was it working? Tested?
If not - should it be?

Parabellum you are assuming that the staff give a sh- t ,they have in all likelihood been treated like the pilots and simply no longer care if the aircraft burns or not , it's not theirs why worry ?

attention do nothing cargo loader driver!!!

there is an office on the 9th floor in cathay city waiting for you!!

Actually. You're out of date. It's moved to the 3 rd floor, to be close to the troops

Can’t speak for AA but CX SOP headset must be connected during refuelling.

OK - connected. But not manned.
Is it a requirement to confirm it is working i.e. comms tested before boarding?

Normally connected on arrival and used, so I guess that’s a check! Not sure there is a specific to check it per se, but it’s fairly obvious if it’s not working. A lot of the time we will start refuel before the flt deck turn up so will be talking to no one anyway 😧 not that they listen 😉

Spanner’s, if there’s nobody in the cockpit the boarding can’t start anyhow.

Friend of mine recently had a Cargo Smoke Warning during refuelling/boarding. The ground headset turned out to be u/s when he attempted to call ground to find out what was happening.
Rather awkward - what would you do?

Get up and check!

That’s what he did. He sent the FO to have a look.
But as he said afterward, no pilot likes the feeling of sitting in the cockpit staring at a potential raging fire in the belly hold while having no comms, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for somebody to come tell him WTF is happening!

Here’s a better solution.
Before boarding, make it SOP to positively check and confirm comms with the ramp via a working headset.
His company actually FORBID this because it ”wastes time” and might delay boarding!
Safety be damned. OTP is the first priority. All other priorities rescinded.