Skill/lucky escape
 

Pilot had "lucky" escape after aircraft caught fire near Inkberrow (From Redditch Advertiser)

G-BCDJ

Skill !
 

With a fire in the cabin it takes a great deal of clear thinking to land the aircraft quickly and safely in a field and then put out the fire.

Very well done!

How unfortunate!

Well done to him

...went to the bus stop and found a bus there that had already left...

Duh!

And it takes four fire engines to do that!

Relative to the size of the aircraft, it doesn't look that small a fire to me! Well done to the pilot.

And as to the response from the fire service, there will likely be a standard level of response to reports of an aircraft crash until the actual emergency service needs are positively identified.

He did very well :ok:

I'd like to know what the cause was. I wonder if it was a laptop battery...

Good job getting down safety!

That's a wake up call for all of us....

I wonder if the windows began to discolour during the flight or after the pilot landed - that's not something they mention to you during training...

Very well done! Massive respect to people like him :ok:

Good to hear that the CAA had been informed :ok: Pity the AAIB weren't:ugh:

Respect to who ever it was beat the odds.

A/c type?

Sir George Cayley

Presumably the police phoned the CAA and the CAA phoned the AAIB? Seems like a properly written article to me.

As for those Pipers... never trusted the bastards, what's it with not having your own door.

I really hate that and also the fact that they are so difficult to get in and out of. Give me a good old Cessna 152 anyday. It may not be stylish or fast but it is far more comfortable, easier to heat up or cool down, get in and out of and the high wing provides some shade from the sun. :ok:
Edited because I had meant to say well done getting the occupant(s) down in one piece even if the aircraft ended up rather the worse for wear.

Well done to the pilot - great result (& good reporting with no mention of schools or plummeting!)

As a piper driver i have to disagree with you DX Wombat

Cherokee's and Tommies are much wider than the 152! heating has never been a problem but i'm mostly upfront, but is the VIZ thats key for me, i have never forgotten going from flying a tommie to a blat in a mates 172 on the same day and realising what i couldn't see! ok the viz straight down to the sides is v-good but i like the heads up view the low wings give. although Cherokee's are a b'stard to get in and out of... i'll give you that.

Back on thread.... small fire my orse. if you were the front two pax you'd be on the wrong side of smoky, still says something for carrying a fire extinguisher with you. 100% skill in getting that down before he/she cooked! well done!

If it was a laptop battery fire, a fire extinguisher might not do anything. Those things are pretty vigorous.

My "plan" for that is to switch on the autopilot, altitude hold, pull back the power to idle, full flap, and at the instant of the stall warner going off open the door and chuck the thing out.

At ~ 60kt it should work.

Unlikely to have been a fuel fire - the only fuel going into the cockpit should be the fuel pressure gauge, maybe. That leaves an electrical fire, or a human-caused one like a fag being dropped.

Re a fuel fire, this makes a powerful case for using hermetically sealed switches throughout the cockpit. They did this after Apollo 1 for exactly that reason, and it more or less happens on upmarket planes, e.g. a TBM uses mil-spec sealed switches. But switches within avionics are generally open. It is easy to make the PTT switch sealed. Not that I think this was a fuel fire.

But yes I would not buy a single door aircraft either...

IO540,

I am conscious of being a little out of my depth (having never flown fixed wing) but what would the effect of opening a door have on your stall speed, particularly if it is asymetric?

I have had a couple of smoke in cockpit events, both of which were (fortunately) on the ground and both of which were taken care of by switching the offending item off. If it was a laptop, I don't suppose the power off will have much effect, and on a windows machine would take forever. "Are your sure you want to shut down" "Of course I am $£$£$$% sure"

Sorry; what I was getting at is that, in the TB20 I fly, opening the gull wing door at a high speed might rip it off, which might not do the elevator or the VS much good... So if one wants to chuck something out, it is best to slow down as much as possible. Early TBs have the little "draught" window but not mine.

It should be much safer to open the door on a Cessna or, if you have a co-operating person in the RHS, on a Piper, but you still need to slow down considerably.

IMHO, and obviously never having done it, if I had a smoking battery I would initially unplug the battery and try to chuck it out, or chuck the whole laptop out. One would not try shutting down windoze :) The cases of burning batteries appear to be caused by an internal short (a penetration with a sharp object is one way to do it) and nothing you can do externally is going to alleviate the situation. Once it goes off, it goes off.

There is actually another option for LIPO batteries which is to use the protective bag shown in this article. They only cost a few quid and should contain a fire in a small battery (but not the smoke). I carry one of these, tucked behind the liferaft. My son is into model flying so he has loads of them.

Well done to the pilot, I can't think of anything else worse than a fire in the air, must have been terrifying. It will be interesting to see what the cause was. I'm also of the opinion that Piper's should have two doors, not that the 28 family ever will of course.

Does sound like there might be a case for not allowing a laptop in the aircraft. Maybe I'll add that to my passenger briefing list.

I was flying as a co pilot on a citation from biggin hill to the Balearic isles. We departed at night and climbing through FL240 over the channel the cockpit started filling with dense acrid smoke. We asked for an immediate return to biggin hill and were given a direct with a clear descent. The pax were terrified and on landing the whole aircraft and our clothing stank.
The fire was caused by a fan motor on the air ducting system.With any smoke situation if you carry oxygen put the masks on. Try and identify if the fire is electrical and shut down all that you can landing as quickly as possible. Do inform Atc as they will point you in the right direction and clear airspace on route. Unless you have experienced it you can not possibly imagine how acrid and choking this smoke can be as well as terrifying for the PAX who will think that they are about to die so keep calm yourself.

Pace

My rule would be to not allow in-flight charging. The causes of battery ignition appear to be either a puncture or overcharging.

Airlines normally allow in flight use of laptops, and they allow them to be connected to the power points provided in business class etc. I would guess they have done some studies on the risk.

I've never seen a consumer item battery go off but Sony got a name for it some years ago, with a duff batch of batteries.

Personally I don't use a laptop in the air (no use for one) but do fly with a tablet computer which has a lithium battery. Apparently, it is not a LIPO type.

On a PA28 the fuel primer can leak fuel into the cockpit.

FBW

Obviously the pilot kept his wits about him and done what all of us would hope to able to achieve if ever placed in a similar situation. Just to go back to the idea of needing to jettison an item in flight. I suppose altitude one has is certainly a critical factor when deciding to place the AC in a near stall configuration to allow something to be chucked. I have thought about this before in the past as to what I would do if I needed something thrown out. I suppose from flying C152s and PA28s not really above 5/6000 I've always considered I reduce from cruise speed and enter a slideslip, chucking the item out in the direction away from the AC. I'd always be worried about slicing off the tailplane!

Also, as a sidenote, where would one stand legally if one jettisoned an object, say smoking laptop for example, which absolutely put the aircraft and POBs in imminent danger, but on its return to earth struck some poor individual on the head possibly killing them? Far fetched I know but such is my luck sometimes!

Yes, very true. Also the oil pressure gauge is usually a bourdon tube job which can leak too.

But these things will need an ignition source. I am pretty sure that if you had a fuel leak into the cockpit, big enough to create a vapour pressure in the right range for ignition, the cockpit be full of fuel and the resulting fire would be massive and totally explosive.

An oil leak is something else but it would be hard to ignite the stuff unless you dropped a fag straight into a puddle of oil.

My money in this case is on a battery going off, or ignition (of paper or the seat material) by a fag.

Or a straight electrical fire, but normally they can be stopped by pulling the main power CB.
Extremely unlikely you would hit somebody. I wouldn't worry about it anyway. It's got to go.

Technical point - just thought I'd mention that the PA28 fuel selector valve and its plumbing is on the left side of the cockpit.

Firstly, I would congratulate the pilot for getting that aircraft down safely - in arguably the worst situation a pilot may find themselves - absolutely full marks. :D

Looking at the picture of the scene I question whether the fire was in fact inside. The fuel pump and a drain valve is on the lower port side of the engine compartment. I had an incident once when, after an emergency landing, fuel was found to be pouring from an ill-fitting detachable fuel bowl sited beneath the fuel pump.

I wonder whether the prop wash/air flow would cause a fire emanating from a similar event as mine to curl up and over the fuselage as it appears to have done in this case. The ignition source in this scenario would of course be the exhaust.

Just a thought.

For once, a very considered newspaper report. :D

wr