El Al Mayday - Possible Engine Fire. Returns to YYZ

[standbykid]

El Al flight returns to Toronto after engine fire - 680 NEWS

Apparently dumped fuel over Lake Ontario and made a safe landing back in Toronto.

[Airbubba]

Audio here nicely edited by Victor at VASAviation:

http://www.liveatc.net/forums/atcavi...ch;attach=9163

FlightRadar24 plot:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/f.../ly30/#bf2c1a8

Don't think they dumped fuel with an engine fire indication.

Air Canada 877, a 787, landed just before with a deflated tire indication.

[Espada III]

The passengers were given food on the plane as Pearson scrambled to assemble staff.

Ahhh!....the cabin crew must all be good Jewish mothers - making sure everyone was fed. You can't get stressed eating a meal. Good move.

[Herod]

Listening to the tape, nicely handled by both sides. They turned an emergency into a non-event. Just the way it should be.

[Airbubba]

I agree. I like the request for a twenty-mile final. Time to read and brief the single engine checklist and configure for the flaps 20 overweight landing in strong gusty winds.

Of course, if the light stayed on in the fire handle, I might go to the Cliffs Notes version of the James Michener checklist and take vectors just outside the marker.

Good job.

[YRP]

Airbubba, sure sounds on the live atc like they did dump fuel... and tracked some distance north while doing it from flightradar.

[Hotel Tango]

YRP, That they dumped fuel was abundantly clear from the r/t transcript, but I think you misunderstood Airbubba's tongue-in-cheek meaning.

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by standbykid

Apparently dumped fuel over Lake Ontario and made a safe landing back in Toronto.

Originally Posted by YRP

Airbubba, sure sounds on the live atc like they did dump fuel... and tracked some distance north while doing it from flightradar.

Thanks, you are absolutely right, I saw that they didn't go over Lake Ontario from the FR24 plot and thought they expedited the return without dumping.

I listened to the last half of the episode in real time while out Christmas shopping after getting an alert on my phone and didn't review the entire recording.

Originally Posted by Hotel Tango

YRP, That they dumped fuel was abundantly clear from the r/t transcript, but I think you misunderstood Airbubba's tongue-in-cheek meaning.

I probably would be less likely to dump fuel with an engine fire warning but I'm not aware of any clear guidance on this subject from Boeing.

The verbiage in our books seem to come from earlier versions of this Boeing article that has been updated several times over the years:

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...7_article3.pdf

[Hotel Tango]

I assumed that the fact they did dump fuel was an indication that they were satisfied there was no actual fire. Their reference to an engine fire was in the very first stages of the emergency. One would presume that they must have reassessed the situation. Otherwise they would have dived back into YYZ without delay.

[Arfur Dent]

Don't worry about max landing weight if you're on fire - or even think you may be. Remember Swissair 111 who were dumping fuel as the molten overhead panel was falling in on them. Cathay 289 took off from Kai Tak many moons ago and had an engine fire which did not extinguish. Capt Colin Baldwin managed to get the aircraft back on the ground in something like 11 minutes, auto landing at just below Max TOW - some 100 tons above MLW. All worked fine and nobody was ever able to beat his 'return time' in the sim.

[Captain Calamity]

Am I the only one who is slightly uncomfortable that the 787 with the deflated tyre indication was allowed to land ahead of the El Al jet on the grounds that they didn't *think* that they would need airport fire services? Especially given that the strong and gusty winds.

El Al were single engine ops, and had requested that they remain close to the airport whilst dumping fuel, presumably to ensure they could land ASAP if the engine fire indication turned out to genuine.

Tyre debris, a brake fire, or even a 787 stuck on the runway with flat tyres could have made that ASAP landing rather more challenging, and tied up rescue services too.

[Matvey]

They landed on different runways. The 787 was sent to 24R; the El Al to 23.

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Captain Calamity

Am I the only one who is slightly uncomfortable that the 787 with the deflated tyre indication was allowed to land ahead of the El Al jet on the grounds that they didn't *think* that they would need airport fire services? Especially given that the strong and gusty winds.

You may be the only one. It sounds to me like the AC 787 was cleared to land on 24R and rolled long to the end. El Al landed on 23, a couple of miles to the north on the other side of the airport, and exited halfway down the runway on H2.

At any rate, if there was problem with landing at YYZ, EY30 reported 34.8 tonnes of fuel onboard turning final which would give them plenty of other options (as long as that pesky engine fire indication didn't come back ). The wind was given as 250/20G26 so, in my opinion, stopping would not have been a problem in a B-763 with good braking even without dumping.

[Captain Calamity]

I stand corrected on the runways used TY folks.