Congratulations to all the professionals involved for a job very well done.

B777 continues to show how well it is designed by nearly all the occupants walking out of accidents that looked very bad. BA38@LHR, Asiana@SFO and now this.

On the subject of keeping vital items with you, I wear a travel vest whenever I travel now.
Not sure whether I am allowed to post commercial links here but here goes:
SCOTTeVEST | Travel Clothing for Men & Women

Even after a year of using it, I am still discovering additional pockets. I carry my PP/travel documents, book, money, phone, full size tablet, cables for charging, headphones, water bottle and snacks in it. Gets heavy sometimes but saves me from carrying those in a separate bag.

Chutes/50%
 

@A340Yumyum:-

In fairness to Mickj3, the aircraft is certified to deplane a full load of pax & crew through half the number of doors installed within 90 secs.

This plane was half full. There were periods on the video where the air around 1L and 4L was completely clear so that's probably why the cabin crew at those doors opened them.

With the benefit of hindsight, there wasn't so much of a need.

Well done to the crew.

Aircraft Ground Maneuvering Camera
 

A feature unique to the 777-300ER and 777-300 flight deck is the Ground Maneuver Camera System (GMCS), designed to assist the pilot in ground maneuvering of the 777-300 with camera views of the nose gear and main gear areas. The cameras are on the leading edge of the left and right horizontal stabilizers and the underside of the fuselage and are used during ground maneuvering. The images are displayed at the Multi-Functional Display positions in the flight deck in a three-way split format.


What a shame it not fitted to the 777-200, it would have given the crew a better situation awareness.

Whilst paxing on a Flybe Q400 a couple of weeks ago, I was heartened to see a couple of chaps (suited, middle-aged), who were carrying on their conversation during the (recorded) safety briefing, being asked firmly but politely to stop talking and pay attention by the CC. Great to see.

What wasn't so great was that as soon as she turned and walked back down the aisle, they carried on :mad: I was half-minded to tell them to shut up myself.

Great job today by all the professionals involved. People taking their bags with them...waste of oxygen.

aox, that concern about suits from inconvenienced pax is ridiculous. Any person carrying baggage on an evac should be prosescuted at the very least for endangering the other pax and crew and for refusing cabin crew safety orders. Both charges, if I'm not mistaken, can carry a two year sentence. There may be other charges that could also be brought. So, let's start criminalising these pieces of human filth that deliberately endanger everyone else, and do it publicly and loudly so that everyone else learns to leave their stuff behind. Massive fines (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each) or a minimum of three years custodial sentence might start people thinking. Any evacuee with a bag in an accident where any other occupant fails to evacuate in time should be charged with murder.

Get to the front of the queue
 

British Airways fire: 'We saw the smoke. The smell was bitter. It was time to panic' | US news | The Guardian

I have heard before that most people just sit there for several precious seconds before the group panic takes over.

RBF

Not sure in what way at that stage of the game (stopped, before the evac) the communications could have been better...I wonder what the writer of the piece suggests?

Standard procedure at BA is to turn the aircraft downwind so the flames are blown away from the aircraft if at all possible.

No one seems to have yet noted that the starboard engine was not shut down at the time the evacuation began. The engine exhaust can be seen to be blowing smoke behind the plane in those videos that are taken from the port side.

In one video that is taken from the starboard side of the plane (which can be seen on the Daily Mail's website - sorry about that) the R4 escape slide can be seen to be deployed after 30 seconds or so, but can be seen to flail around in the exhaust coming from the starboard engine.

Also, the R3 escape slide can be seen to twisted towards the tail of the plane in this photo, most probably by engine exhaust but possibly also by water pressure from fire hoses. No one can be seen to escape from R4 or R3 in the Daily Mail video, which is unusual given that the cabin crew would normally direct passengers to an escape on a slide on the opposite side of an active fire.

https://www.flightglobal.com/assets/...x?itemid=63710

It might have been shut down, but these are huge engines and have a lot of inertia, so take a while to stop turning and producing residual thrust.

Given the amount of cabin baggage likely on the floor and under seats (because all the overhead lockers are full of piano sized suitcases) it may expedite getting out of your seat to take the junk on the floor with you.

I am a regular passenger on BA, and BA (specifically) need to start applying their own carry on baggage rules to those that fly BA . . .

But it's time to give the 'all PAX are idiots' broken record a rest, 'all flight crew are incompetents and/or mass murderers' is just as imbecilic . . . despite the fact that your kirk has intentionally murdered multiple plane loads of people and killed many more by being unable to do your job and fly the plane properly or opening the doors into a smoke and flame filled environment . . . while PAX offloading baggage in ground evacuations has NOT killed even a small percentage of that number of people . . . perhaps think about that before blaming everybody else . . . as usual . . .

Well done to the crew makes me proud to be British and Mrs Angry is ex BA Cabin Crew.
Punters have been very complimentary about the Cabin crew and how they moved them away from an exit that was unusable.
By the sounds of it the Commanders last flight as retirement was imminent.
:D I salute you

Fair comment McGinty. However, as a previous poster mentioned, BA FAs are empowered to begin an evacuation if the situation is catastrophic (and ac stationary), so it is possible they the FA at 3R took it upon themselves to initiate the evacuation as the crew were going through the short situational analysis on the flight deck.

On the ATC tape you can clearly hear the evacuation alarm in the background when the crew tell ATC that they are evacuating. This is the final item of the evacuation checklist, so the Fuel Cutoff Switches and Fire Switches are already off, and the engines would start winding down.

It is just a matter of the exact timing of when those two things occurred and whether there was an overlap. All will be revealed by the NTSB in due course. We all indulge in a little monday morning quarter-backing at times like this. The main thing is that the end result was excellent, and we all look forward to learning something from it.

Let's be clear. I'm not proposing something, but pointing out potential difficulties and drawbacks in prosecuting all.

If there has been any aggression and abuse from people refusing to comply when requested, then of course the airline has discretion to ban and/or prosecute, but if all went smoothly without any counter-instruction from staff then trying to prosecute all might be over the top.

That doesn't mean I'm condoning them.

Er... overlooking OZ214 in SFO aren't we? or are you speaking of this particular subtype only?

Identifying location and severity of fire!?
 

Criticism of the flight crew and cabin staff is probably premature. In such circumstances it may not be certain, at the time that evacuation is ordered, either the location or severity of a fire. This is particularly true when the aircraft is engulfed in smoke. The timeline of the decisions needs to be considered, but it all seems to have been appropriate and effective under the circumstances.

From reports, it seems that the cabin staff properly evaluated the situation once the escape doors were open (if not before) and directed the passengers accordingly. This was not a drill. No doubt there may have been areas that could have been handled better and that will be investigated.

The priority was to remove the passengers expeditiously. The situation could have become very ugly, very quickly. Fortunately, the timely and effective response of the fire services averted a catastrophe, together with the prompt effective action of all others involved.

Hopefully I haven't overlooked a post regarding this but if so, here it is again. The manufacturer's requirements for blade (or IBR) containment. Being an old fart, I seem to recall in the distant past (20 years or so) that engines from that era had a half blade requirement.


Federal Aviation Regulation Sec. 33.94 - Blade containment and rotor unbalance tests.

I thought that a MayDay call imposed radio silence on everyone else.
Maybe I'm old fashioned........

I think there is a pretty broad consensus that passengers evacuating with hand luggage is a safety issue. I certainly share that view. Still though...

You cannot legislate against the "fight or flight" physiological and psychological response which causes irrational reactions in some people, particularly those who are not trained in procedures for handling an emergency. You can prosecute people, but a decent defense attorney should have no problem in presenting the defendant as a persecuted victim who acted out of panic rather than malice in a life-threatening situation. I suspect the rate of convictions would be rather low. In this case, where the evacuation was a success, the rate of convictions would be exactly zero.

For trained crew, they know that an evacuation is not ordered lightly and that it is done only when the failure to do so presents a serious threat to lives on board. People in the industry know the dangers of rapid fire propagation in cabins and the rapidity with which a seemingly benign situation can become lethal. I doubt that your average passenger has the slightest awareness of any of this, and that is in part a function of the industry itself downplaying the risks of air travel and diluting what should be clear safety briefings with an attempt to be entertaining rather than stating clearly that an ordered evacuation is an emergency in which a few seconds may be the difference between life and death. And that level of clarity may have the unintended consequence of creating panic.

If you want to remove the problem of large bags being hauled off in evacuations, prevent it in the first place by investing in quicker baggage delivery systems and by removing the financial penalty for checking large bags. Of course, expect resistance from the bean counters at airlines who have become addicted to the income stream from baggage fees.

"I thought that a MayDay call imposed radio silence on everyone else.
Maybe I'm old fashioned......."


I believe we are hearing two frequencies at once on that recording - so other then acknowledgments to go around or change frequency, there were no calls from other aircraft after the Mayday was declared.