As a passenger, in my mind it all depends on what kind of instruction was passed along from the flight deck. If no word from the flight deck, then I have to go on the little information I've got, which is an entire wing on fire. In that case, out the door I go. For all I know, the flight deck has been incapacitated.

A minor interesting point - If you are going to specify a side (left or right) or a direction (front or rear), it's useful to do so prior to commanding "evacuate".

Example - "Left side only, left side only, Evacuate, Evacuate".

The reasoning being that every word you say after the word "evacuate" will likely go unheeded and possibly unheard amongst the yelling.

I'm not trying to school anybody, nor am I picking on your post. I've always thought it was an interesting point given humans (passengers and flight attendants) reactions to stress.

Ian W

Most of my hours are 777. I've yet to hear of any situation where at least a pair of doors weren't usable. I want a long retirement - I wouldn't have that if I was a charcoal corpse in a burnt out hulk.

Sitting in an aluminium structure, part of which is uncontrollably on fire, and which contains a great deal of inflammable liquid, is not a good idea. The situation could, but for the grace of god, have quickly become unsurvivable. The AA or BA way is the only way.

Yessss . . .
The preferred procedure is to check for fire BEFORE opening door.

Passenger Initiated Evacuation


@SB and others. Watching the available videos of the AC on fire, the red flashing beacon was on. To me this indicates engine(s) still running.
Not a good idea to deplane when #1 may still be running.

As for those fearing the alum. foil skin will burn through in seconds, think again. Is it not an Aluminium alloy, designed to be much stronger than pure aluminum.

I keep seeing references to a "hot" engine igniting fuel. If the engine had been shut down for an hour, I can't imagine anything in it being hot enough to ignite a fire. Seems to me, the only thing that would ignite a fuel/oil leak would be hot brakes.

Were both engines shut down immediately after landing ? If not a cabin crew initiated evacuation could have led to passengers evacuating on the left with an engine running. Were the cabin crew sure that the aircraft was not going to start moving forward if they deployed the slides without instruction from the flight deck ?

A perfect example of how vital good CRM and communication is during an emergency.

Initially in Singapore the procedure was for the flight deck to specify which side of the aircraft to evacuate from but that changed many years ago to having the cabin crew assess the situation outside and decide to use one or both.

Engines shut down as part of the pilot initiated evacuation sequence - due to it about to become a charred hulk. It's not rocket science.

At which point I'm out of here - as I would have been had I been in an jet with an uncontrolled fire with no one seemingly in control.

After The QF 32 incident & the aircraft safely on the ground (after a superb effort by all the Crew of course), the Captain then took the time to go & speak to & with the passengers. I wonder if the Captain of SQ368 might have done the same & what might he have said to them?

I wonder if a polite letter to SQ HQ at SIN, asking them what their company rules & regulations are for initiating an aircraft evacuation. Can only the Captain make this call, can any CC make the call, if they consider the situation that serious & they have heard nothing from the F/D, or if the nasty stuff really hits the fan, with a definite clear danger to life & no action appears to be taken by any crew member, can any sensible passenger make this call & operate slides etc?

For those advocating a non evacuation..... How much evidence do you require before you would have pulled the pin?
Secondly, the real threat indeed would have been for a passenger initiation of the evacuation. In this case it didn't but the thoughts and (in)actions of the captain, at the subsequent court of enquiry, would be illuminating in such an event.
I look forward to the open transcript from the Singapore authorities on this one.

Major maintenance snafu, undetected oil/fuel system component fatigue, or turbine disk/blade/burner can failure are some of the typical man-made causes.

Why the fire bottles failed to confine the fire to the nacelle is a big question - if they were discharged in time and there was no disk/blade failure, which seems unlikely as that event would have gotten everyone's attention pretty quickly.

The point is maintenance errors pop up & not all are immediately post maintenance which is why I left the question of any recent maintenance in my original post. The AA191 was just to support the timing point, not the type of error. It could have been a fuel connection not tightened which took xyz sectors/hours/days to come loose.

Time will tell .........
 

Until the investigation reveals the real reasons for not evacuating the aircraft we are all guessing what was in the Captain's mind but he would most likely be concerned about a fuel fire spreading UNDER the aircraft - as has happened - and then bye bye to any extended chutes on the port side (full of deplaning passengers!)

And was he influenced by his knowledge of the five star fire fighting utilities at Changi? Tossing passengers out of a burning aircraft at night whilst not being totally sure of the external conditions presents a situation where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't!

Keep the pax on board and the aircraft explodes with huge loss of life or put them out and they possibly get incinerated in a spreading fuel fire?

Think I'd still opt for the first choice ......... sitting here with my Chardonnay in hand!

Earlier there was a question about flight crew visiting the cabin. As this was a 12 hour sector, they would have had a minimum of three crew. So someone could have walked and sniffed before/after the turnback.

but we don't even know if it was a nacelle fire.

Quite possibly the fuel simply leaked while in a slipstream environment and wetted a lot of surfaces behind the nacelle in flight before dripping down and wetting the nacelle and the ground after it stopped and only then the ignition.

It's gonna be an interesting investigation to determine the links in the chain

Without questioning the evacuation decision, I do have to wonder about those who are stating they would start their own evacuation. If the left engine is still running at idle power (just an assumption), which exits, if any, are safe to use to evacuate? My best guess is that maybe L1 would be safe, as it should be far enough forward to avoid being sucked into the air intake. I would worry that all other doors are unusable with an engine running -- those behind the engine might have their slides blown over by the jet blast, and those just in front of it might result in being blended by a GE90-115.

I'm not convinced a safe evacuation is *possible* without the cooperation of those in the pointy end.

I think CCA has some valid points.

Fire in mainly concentrated on leading/trailing edges of the wing, wing tip and engine exhaust. Fuel not evaporated is very valid reason.

May be right wing fuel tanks were empty by the time of landing.

Our evacuation checklist has the call to evacuate as step 5. That takes about 15-20 seconds after stopping. There is no 30 delay between selecting fire bottles during an evacuation.

If they had evacuated, and met the evacuate time criteria, everyone would have been off before the fire was under control.

The camera shows about 5'-10' of wing outboard of the engine.

The fire was at least 3 minutes based on the exterior video.

ASN Aircraft accident Boeing 737-275 C-GQPW Calgary International Airport, AB (YYC)

PWA 501 went up in smoke shortly after turning on to a taxiway after a rejected takeoff.

News reports at the time said the pax initiated the evacuation just barely in time.

Yes there were injuries, but no charred bodies.

Pictures of P Dub 501

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...f5e70033e6.jpg

http://www.nna-ccj.ca/lb/gallery/win...lay_1984SN.jpg

http://www.calgaryfiremuseum.com/upl...093479.jpg?504

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...e2ee03a6f0.jpg