It seems to me that the commenting community on this thread breaks down broadly into three groups:

1) A large majority of non-professionals who can't understand why the Captain didn't order an evac, don't know why the fire trucks didn't go over the grass, can't imagine why the pax didn't beat the CC out of the way and exit pronto...

2) An (assumed, since silent) number of professionals who are not saying anything at all.

3) A very small number of professionals who are saying, well, why don't we wait till we have had a chance to hear from the chap who actually made the decision, and the facts he had at his disposal when he made that decision, before we leap to any hasty conclusions...

I'm not a professional pilot, or firefighter, or AT Controller, or airport manager. But I think I know how to listen. Fun as it is to follow the thread, personally, I'm with (3) on this one. The most important thing is that, whether by luck, good judgement, or a combination of both, no one died.

NEW FOOTAGE FROM THIS INCIDENT!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O4QGpq0O5A

Pitch black in the cabin - except for fire light!

PA announcements to remain seated "for your safety". Surprisingly relaxed cabin.

Inflight entertainment system appears still working.

A few answers from Singapore
 

Nowadays SLF but before, UK RAF.

But as someone who lives in sing I can tell you that fire trucks taking a short cut would not have turned out well.

I can also say, re the latest videos posted, the voice attributed to an FA is not an FA. That is a filipina accent. SQ uses sing staff. Totally different accent. It was a passenger. Good point she made, but not an SQ FA.

Bottom line. Me. Evac evac. There is no escaping the obvious. What the report might say is one thing. But I am 99.9% sure the guys at the pointy end will be looking for new jobs..... Rightly so.

I wouldn't have asked this forty years ago, but: Suppose so many of the PAX were calm because it simply didn't occur to them that they were in danger? A great many of the comments I see on line (but not here) show a delusion that the physical world is so thoroughly under human control that if somebody doesn't make or allow something to happen, it doesn't happen. So while a fire outside is a problem for people outside, nobody is going to let it come inside - so, no problem inside.

Or am I just a paleoflatus grumbling about 'kids these days'?

Pitch black cabin indicates both engines were shut down. In a fire drill only the affected engine is shut down. The only logical explanation I can see for both engines to be shut down (or have I got this wrong??) is that the evac checklist was taken at least to that point.

Where does that leave us?

Since the other videos shot in the cabin don't show a pitch black cabin, my guess (as an ex professional cameraman) is that this most recent video was shot on a camera that had the exposure set to manual, and on a high f-stop (the digital equivalent, obviously). But now I am speculating, which is precisely what I whinged about others doing just now..

And my apologies, MrSnuggles, I wasn't barking at you in particular. I wasn't really barking at all...

@ Wageslave

How are you sure the left engine was shut down?

External videos seem to show, that the landing lights are ON, the beacon is ON etc.

In the latest video in my previous post it sure seems the LH engine is running because you can hear what I think is an engine. Also if the onboard entertainment system is still operational, would you not need AC power on the aircraft? Could it be the APU is running?

In any case, if there is any AC power on the aircraft, why were the interior lights not turned ON?

@ rcsa...

Don't want to get into a pissing contest with you but that cabin is pitch black except for a few lights.

Jet Jockey, exposure is a funny thing, especially on phone cameras. I suspect it wasn't as dark in the cabin as that vid makes it look, having seen the other videos of the incident shot both internally and externally. Early morning and overcast, for sure, so it wasn't bright daylight. But the human eye is (if I recall) something like a thousand times more sensitive to light than a phone camera. Just because the camera shows the scene as dark, doesn't mean the human eye would see it like that.

That said, the billowing black smoke from the starboard side would certainly have reduced the ambient light. But have a look at the images on this video SIA flight catches fire while making emergency landing in Singapore - Channel NewsAsia - there are some better-exposed stills from inside the cabin around 00:30.

Of course I don't know what it was really like in the cabin, and I absolutely don't want to get into a pissing contest! My point is simply that we shouldn't necessarily trust phone camera footage on youtube, shot by someone under extreme duress, to give a true indication of light levels in the cabin as they were actually perceived by the human eye.

Here's the $6,000,000 question: "How much danger WHERE these passengers in, in this SPECIFIC set of circumstances"?

- KNOWING that (up to 6?) state of the art fire-fighting appliances - capable of delivering a mother-load of foam to the fire - are less than a minute away.

- KNOWING that the cabin would provide protection for a short-time (odds on until rescue services were on-scene)

- NOT KNOWING if passengers may be killed by burning pooling fuel by the time the evacuation was COMPLETE (not initiated; one has to try and extrapolate what conditions will be like in a couple of minutes time)

I'd suggest that in this case that there may be a greater chance of passengers being safer the way it was done.

In my opinion, it's not comparable to the Air China B738 where fire-services took around FIVE minutes to get the foam flowing.

If the captain DIDN'T know that fire services would be there in a matter of a few seconds then - in my opinion - that would be a game changer and an evacuation would be the obvious choice. But if he DID know how close they were then to me that changes things.

I'm reminded of a pyromaniac running our local fire dept ragged by lighting plastic rubbish bins - one after the other. Brigade went through the same "SOP" - turn-up - on-board hose reel - extinguish - about 6 in a row. When attending the 7th, did he do the same thing? Nope - he grabbed a dry powder extinguisher this time. Why? This bin was attached to a pole with 230v running through a cable for an overhead light. Point I'm trying to make is that he had the presence of mind to break from the obvious & common solution and realise that in this specific set of circumstances things needed to be done slightly differently.

As a pro, it doesn't matter what the fire services may at some stage be capable of, you have an uncontained fire, you're sat in an aluminium tube, you have lots of flammable liquids contained therein. You have to evacuate. No ifs no buts, you have to get out. There is no other advice doing the training rounds which is contrary to that.

I would have to agree with that - I remember many years ago at Hobsonville (grass field) in Auckland, a Bell 47 messed up an auto and chopped the tailboom off - the fire appliance at Hobby was one of the Unipower tender rather than the off road appliance normally there.

The appliance launched out of the fire station straight across the grass where it became bogged up to it's axles and there it remained for a day until it was dug out.

Those fire crews know that airport, if none of them drove on the grass it was for a good reason.

Most cameras will bias the exposure to limit over-exposure of the brightest portion of the scene (put someone in front of a window and then take a photo to see what I mean).

But with fires, typically you'll get a lot of yellow (as the red channel in the camera saturates, but the exposure is set with the expectation of a more even colour temperature). Inside where the ambient light is shielded by the majority of the cabin - it will appear very dark unless cabin lighting is on to balance the shot.

In essence, what you're seeing is under-exposure of the cabin and over-exposure of the flames.

(professional photographer here)

Except that a lot of that "flammable liquid contained within" may not actually be contained within (it may be running out and under the aircraft).

Here's a question: "If you had reason to believe that the fuel was pooling under the aircraft - and was on fire - and was spreading - would you still initiate an evacuation if you knew that the slides would be burning almost immediately, or would you "tough it out" and remain inside if you could see 6 state of the art appliances 500m away"?

Quoting rcsa I take it you know the old aviator's saw in relation to assuming things? My straw poll of professional pilots has the majority saying that unless there was some circumstance or information which no-one has yet disclosed, they would have evacuated - the potential downside of sitting tight outweighing the risks of an evacuation. Admittedly these are people who fly for a variety of major, first world airlines, your mileage may vary elsewhere in the world.

Out of curiosity, anyone know why the pilots exited via the cockpit windows rather than take the fwd slides?

Cabin light comments:

The videos suggest either one engine or the APU is running as IFE is powered (AC only).

Emergency lights on the 777 are self powered and come on automatically if the main DC busses lose power. They can be manually activated by CC or from the flight deck. Since the aircraft appears to have AC power, the DC busses are also powered, so the automatic function would not activate. While the cabin emergency lights are not all that bright, the parts of the videos that show the dividers and seats along the aisle suggest definitively they are not on.

There's the door ..... here's your hat.
 

Julio, you are quite correct about the fire tender routing and the possible / probable consequences of off-roading at Changi.

And I have no idea whether the crew made the right decision concerning evacuation, or not. I do not know all the circumstances.
But, do you really think that termination of employment is the appropriate outcome for a crew that makes a judgement call that may later be analysed to have been incorrect or inappropriate under the circumstances, even though the only real consequence from that judgement call was that nobody broke a hip?

If an evacuation had been ordered, no one would have questioned the decision to vacate a burning aircraft, and even if there had been injuries there wouldn't be a single post on the entire message board suggesting they should have stayed onboard.

Try to imagine how the Captain must be questioning himself at the moment over his decision.