Southwest Airlines jet catches fire after landing in Houston
 

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
A Southwest Airlines plane at Houston's Hobby Airport caught on fire after landing, forcing passengers to evacuate.

Video of the landing here: abc13.com: Houston News | Houston Weather, Traffic and Sports

As SLF I cant really comment but looks like a tyre failure resulted in an undercarraige fire - dealt with by emergency services whilst evacuation from the plane via slides.

Apparently flight 519 from new orleans to houston.

Spot the stupid women with their carry on bags.

:ugh:

Wow, great video, it appeared to be somewhat preplanned from the camera shot. Still, that was the longest three minutes watching that wheel burn before the slides popped.

Good job, I had a lot better angle than the pilots on that call!

Not just the women, how about the guy at end with papers flying out of his briefcase.:ugh:

Looks like the action starts here about 15:50 into the recording:

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kh...2009-0030Z.mp3

Sounds like the tower freq that WN 519 was on is not captured on this recording.

Fine, some passengers took carry-on out, but why was a fireman the first person to catch passengers coming down the slide?

Isn't breaking ankles a hazard after coming down slides fast? As a SLF, I recall preflight briefings saying a few people (one or two) should assist fellow passengers at the bottom of the slide to speed evacuation.

Or perhaps that was then...

I agree, why so long time stand still and no action?

Interesting to see the passengers go down the slides and start filming with their mobiles... perhaps there's more footage now on youtube!

Nice crowd control by crew and the F/As knee high skirt ;)

Why no sign of the FO Hanging out the window to have a look for signs of smoke or fire?

Looking forward to hearing more..

Very poor response by the fire services, and why the long long delay evacuating ?


With the fire allowed to burn that long it could easily have got to the fuel tanks, shades of the China Air 737 in Taiwan..

wow good video. I too bit my finger nails whilst waiting for something to happen after the aircraft stopped. I thought the video was looping back but it wasn't.

Maybe a bit slow to initiate the evac BUT at the end of the day all pob got out ok, so that's all that really matters. :ok:

looks to me like a perfect evacuation(at least from crew side, agree that pax should leave theire crap behind)

it's nothing you would want to rush so time wise from full stop until he stows the ground spoilers indicating they have made up there mind to evacuate seems very reasonable.
Not the easiest thing to evaluate since they have no flightdeck indications of fire and you know that evacuating meens a high risk of personal injury.

:ok: to the crew!!

M.

The so called "delay" doesn't seem that bad? Presumably there is a decision to be made and communicated once the aircraft has come to a halt safely and you don't want to evac passengers into running engines etc.

good call - LH exits etc
 

I agree, it seemed an AGE before any fire crew arrived on scene, however I was VERY pleased to see common sense prevailed & they exited the safe side of the a/c & presumably after No 1 eng' had spooled down, good job by everyone as all safe & sound by the looks of things :D

Extinguisher
 

Looks like they used water to put out the fire - I thought that this was a no no with brake fires - can explode with thermal shock?

"and you don't want to evac passengers into running engines etc."

After the view of a container in an engine earlier in the week, the mind boggles at the carnage of an early evacuation of SLF (or SSF - self slicing freight :\)

@silverelise

Fully agree with your post.

That's the way we are trained.

Just proves that people don't listen to the safety briefs, the guy with the papers blowing in the wind actually threw his bag down the slide first then went chasing his documents!

On a flight last week (BMI Baby), A pax sat near me was talking on his mobile whilst the safety demo was taking place, the steward giving the demo never said a word to him during or after the demo finished, this guy was also sat in an exit row.

Although all turned out well in this incident, if there had been a wing fuel leak in the vicinity I think that the 3 minute delay in getting the rescue services to the aircraft could possibly have resulted in a more horrific outcome, hopefully much can be learned from that video.

Why was this being filmed in the first place? Did the news helicopter have a heads up that something was wrong? If so why wasn't this communicated to the airfield so the fire brigade would be ready?

Or in America do the news stations systematically film every landing on the off chance they can 'luck-out' with a crash / fire / disaster?

that is always my biggest worry on a flight. All this luggage in the bins. People do not care about others and will do everything to get it out of a plane when there is an emergency. To my opinion they should take legal action on those people who take luggage with them after an emergency situation. my 5 cents to it.

can anyone advised how many CC onboard?

From what one can see from the video this has been just another good job done: they gathered information on what had happened and what the actual situation was, they made the right decision to evac on the opposite side of the fire, they carried out the evac procedure in an orderly and disciplined way (you can see the speedbrakes being lowered and the engines being shut with the emergency lights coming on and after everyone was out the flight attendants controlling the crowd on the outside).

By the way a tire burst/fire has no indication in a 737 flightdeck making situation assessment and subsequent decisions a tough job that involves experience, skills and training.
Well done everyone!

Three minutes is only a long time sitting in your armchair watching.

On the flight deck making an accurate assessment, then carrying out the procedure, then ordering the evacuation takes time. If the situation was clearly catastrophic it would have happened much quicker because the assessment would be easier and quicker. Ordering an evacuation is not something to be done lightly.

The fire services attended as quickly as I would imagine it was possible to do if you think about it.

Apart from the bozos evacuating with bags a nasty situation well handled on the face of it.

Confiscate bags?
 

While there is no limit to human foolishness, it might be good if passengers who took their bags out in an emergency evacuation had them confiscated by security. A few well publicised cases (!) might be salutary.

I TOTALLY agree with Tarjet and M.Mouse.

Job well done, let's for once not try to pick holes in the manner in which a crew dealt with a situation that was thrust upon them. They didn't have the luxury of watching it on video and i'm sure just got on with what they had to do in that circumstance. Nice one lads :ok:

Delay in beginning evacuation
 

Some comments are critical of the time taken to begin the evacuation, about three minutes seems the figure. Pales into insignificance compared to the evacuation of QF1 at Bangkok, which admittedly had an inoperable PA system, which took about 20 minutes to initiate the evacuation as I recall.

Well done to that crew but I hope efforts are made to track down the selfish pratt who effectively blocked the chute to gather his paperwork.
Jail is too good for that :mad: moron.
Well done again to the crew.:D:D:D

Leave your bags! i think 1 in 3 people struggled with there bags!

and one stupid guy chasing his papers along the runway!

i cant believe that!

I was just waiting for his papers to blow into the fire and really get it going! Muppet!

Anyone who blocks an escape chute in front of me will find themselves very swiftly moved out of the way :ugh:

To put it simply:
Hot brakes=no water (natural cooling, fan, short bursts of water mist)
Wheel fire=plenty of water

For reference, see the bottom-right corner of page 7:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/air...ff/arff737.pdf

It seems that the tires on the right MLG had already deflated, so the risk of explosion was no longer a factor.

Any comment about the ARFF service response should take into account the time when the alarm was actually received.

BR,

aerolearner

3 minutes can be broken down to a number of tasks:

1) WTF just happened?....Call tower re stopping on the runway & observe anything unusual..check wheel/eicam page.....call cc check for any signs? 1minute

2)preselect fire commander freq

3)grab emergency evac c'list and start

4)tower advises eta of fire commander... so far 2minutes passed

5)tower/fire commander/chief/cc notice flames from wheel(s)

6)announce evacuation

7)crew and ABP's evacuate..3minutes (which may feel like 30 seconds to the flight crew)
Well done:D!

This only highlights a very common problem. Many people pay scant attention to the safety briefing. As a result when this sort of rare event takes place the individual goes into a panic/survival mode. Having not refreshed their short term memory with the vital information, their brain relies upon what it instinctively knows. Why do they show me how to fasten and unfasten a seatbelt? Because the one you instinctively fasten and unfasten every day is in your car, and it fastens and unfastens in a different location, and in instinctive mode, guess what you are going to try first! Likewise without paying attention to the modification requirements those same people will often instinctively seek the exit that they came on board by. They will seek to leave the aircraft with the posessions they brought with them. What was of value to them then, will remain so unless they have accepted a behaviour modification requirement.

This problem doesn't just lie with the passenger (although they are the ultimate beneficiary) the airlines themselves have no desire to impart any sense of fear in their customers, and so the emergency briefing is delivered in a manner that rarely attracts interest, or reinforces the imperative. This is day to day public transport, not a space shuttle launch. As ever it is a compromise. The people you see in this evacuation are in all probability, no different in their typical responses to many others, on any number of flights around the world.

People often do get hurt in evacuations, and this is one reason why their use is not advocated lightly. The need for an evacuation and the decision to undertake one, is often made after information from a number of sources is assimilated and processed. In a case like this it may very well involve communication and feedback from the control tower, emergency services, cabin crew etc. None of this happens in a split second, and normally takes much longer than the casual observer might imagine.

Whilst I share all your concern about people that take their bags or other belongings during an evacuation, let's just accept it as an unfortunate fact. It happened here, it happened at probably every previous evacuation and it will happen again. Not sure what we can do about it without getting draconian.

However, if this person would delay me because they need to fetch their Prada bag or all important briefcase, I would not be terribly patient. To say the least.

Thanks aerolearner

Unless I'm missing something obvious, that took far too long.

It's not just the passengers who sometime jeopardize an evacuation by wanting to take their bags........

FedEx Flight 647 Crash Evacuation - Video

Full load of jumpseaters......

So many self-righteous posters here, all knowing exactly what to do and how they themselves would react in an emergency situation.
Well I’ve been in a few emergencies, including fires in my life and trust me, you know nothing until you’ve experienced one.
Per

The thing that bothers me the most is that the guy with the papers going everywhere actually sends his stuff down the slide first, then goes down himself & then sits at the bottom while he collects everything. Even then he doesn't get it all & ends up chasing the papers towards the rear of the aircraft!!!

Some of the other passengers should sue him for endangering their lives by slowing down the evacuation.

And what was the F/A at that particular exit doing? There were quite a number of passengers with hand luggage.

Info from Southwest
 

Now that things have calmed down, I have some more info for you. There was no advance notice of any problems, and the tire burst upon landing. The crew did not declare an emergency prior to landing. A lof of speculation may have been fueled by the one television station that was at the airport with cameras running at the time of landing, but they had no advance notice. Another television station, the ABC affiliate, had its helicopter returning to the airport at the time of landing. The aircraft was N371SW, which is currently out of service. It will not return to service until it is thoroughly inspected.

Brian Lusk
Southwest Airlines