SQ-368 (engine & wing on fire) final report out
 

Strange that they didn't evacuate ?

another 777 engine fire - becoming a bit to common for my liking

Wow ...
 

Absolutely incredible no one was hurt! :eek:

http://i.imgur.com/oclAv7O.png

No evacuation alright. Surprised there wasn't a riot from the punters sitting there watching it burn.

3 hrs into flight?

This means 3 hrs back to Changi?

There's video of people quietly filming the billowing flames outside their window for minutes. :-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FlXCwmtPSw

Incredible, that could have ended very badly.

Must have been much more than an oil leak. They were smelling fuel in the cabin.
It appears that the starboard wing was burning along its entire span because it had been fuel soaked up the leading and trailing edges. If it had lit off inflight, I shudder to think of what would have happened.

A very serious incident/accident that could have been much worse.

I don't understand the mechanism of the leading and trailing edges burning. How much of the 777 wing is 'wet'?

Can you see much of the wing from the cockpit, either directly or via camera?

Seriously, isn't that amount of flames a very good reason to evacuate?

I think I'd have ordered the evacuation...and then taken my own 'selfie'.

Of course
 

Of course they should have evacuated. On the left hand side. SIA pilots have zero capability when it comes to thinking outside the box.

Slow RFF service.
 

According to one passengers report it took 5 minutes for RFF to arrive.
If that's correct that's a pretty poor response time !!!

I expected a little better from SIA. The decision to evacuate would have been immediate after seeing that....

Hard call to make - given response vehicles already on scene & likelihood for serious pax injuries via evac command is almost a g'teed - also likely that evac command would see RH doors opened exposing cabin. Will wait for the remainder of the facts to emerge before passing judgement, but based on the pax's video & news grabs it certainly seems the Capt did an excellent job in keeping the calm.

This is crap. They should have evacuated. I would have ordered an evacuation in that situation. ANY time you have fire you evacuate. Especially on the wing like that one. They are EXTREMELY lucky that no one was injured or killed. Stupid decision by the crew. And before anyone say "Let's wait to see why they did what they did", I say you are not a pilot. Fire was clearly visible. EVACUATE!!!!:mad:

Of course.

The time lapse from the back to the front in communication terms with total commotion and mucho screaming; I'm not surprised it took that long. I don't know what SIA's procedures are but, it seemed to have worked. It may well have been sheer luck but..... I'm sure a lot will be learned from this.

Unbelievable. Totally unacceptable they did not evacuate. There has been huge loss of life from similar situations in the past. If that fire and smoke penetrated the cabin there would have been casualties.
Very lucky passengers.

Willit Run, what time lapse? It takes all of 5 seconds for the chief purser to push the cockpit call button to indicate urgent situation. Then another 5 seconds for the captain to pick up the phone. Then another 5 seconds for the CP to tell Capt, right wing on fire.

This was nothing but luck. Pure stupidity on the part of all of the crew. From the front all the way to the back. Any one of them could have called an urgent situation at any time. Apparently they are all to timid to do that. Time to find another career if that is the case.

Also the tower/ARFF could have/should have told the crew that the wing is on fire as well......

I agree with your first sentence and would, in this case, have done the same (using the left side slides, obviously). However, I do not agree with your second sentence and believe there should be more thought put into situations than any fire=evacuate. There are cases where an engine fire can be better dealt with than evacuating (and I'm not just talking while in the air) and since you say "ANY time", what about a galley fire or a toilet fire?

I definitely believe in sitting on my hands for a few seconds and doing nothing, rather than leaping into action with instant decisions but it does sound like these guys were frozen into indecision, rather than cooly assessing. As a regular SIA traveller that is a bit worrying.

Ha ha, typical Pprune ...well it is Monday morning I suppose.

Quite apart from the fact that the wing is not visible from the flight deck, nobody here knows what indications or communications the flight crew had. At least the passengers got to take their carry on with them.

I am surprised……I am surprised non of the PAX didn't initiate it either, there is no way on earth I would sit in my seat with that lack of action.

The crew in the cabin should have been making the call to the Captain and if he ignored or neglected to act they should have. Sitting there like that is nothing like QF32 where it was not on fire. This was and the equipment was not there to meet it when it stopped.

Amazing alright.

Very true and having looked at the video taken by the passenger in the news article, it certainly doesn't look as dramatic as the photograph. Maybe the photo was the initial ignition and then it settled down into the more sedate and gentle flames we can see in the video. I believe I would have still evacuated but on further investigation I would retract my statement that the guys were 'frozen into indecision'.

Its quite apparent that the fire was visible from inside the cabin. The crew knew about it, the pax knew about it and so did the tower. NO excuse. I wont even get into the 2-3 hour diversion with a fuel leak.

How about....." The whole wing area is on fire"
Should focus everyone's, especially the captains, attention even if the pilots can't see the majority of the wing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s92TYaLJZew

You'd want to be damn sure the engines were shut down first!

There is no such thing as a 'good' fire!
Sure, wait to assess the situation first but the wing was on fire.
Get out!
" Sorry Sir for the friction burn but talk about what you're going to do to me over dinner with your family tonight!".

Wing on fire
 

The bottom line here is the RIGHT WING of a Boeing 777 EXTENDED RANGE is on fire. At least large portions of the leading edge, trailing edge, engine, and who knows what underneath.

The pilots know how much fuel is sitting in those wing tanks on a wide-body ER turn-back. It's going to come down to who knew what the exact situation was, when ... and how much longer it took to call for an evacuation.

As a commercial pilot, if I saw anything resembling the photo I posted earlier, that would be an IMMEDIATE evacuation, other side, at wheel stop.

https://i.imgur.com/DXbbjRd.jpg

Was this the same airline that elected to continue to Pudong after a Dual Engine Flame out near HKG??

As a non-pilot lurker [but with a technical interest etc] I have to say if I was on that flight I would be screaming at the crew to order an evacuation.

Yes I know there are fire bottles in the engine nacelles etc but all I can see is a fully loaded aircraft sitting on the ground with most of its right wing in flames.

All I can think of is the British Airtours disaster and how quickly that fire spread into the cabin.

I know that evacuating a fully loaded aircraft on the runway of an active airport is dangerous but Jesus Christ, this could have gone very badly the other way.

This video is taken from outside the aircraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jC-2NhU10Q
It shows that the entire wing is well involved with flame, and (concerningly) it takes over a minute and a half to knock back from the time the AFS first start hosing it. It takes over a minute for them to get foam on the wing, and a significant amount of that time is probably spend driving around the taxiways, rather than cutting across the grass.

That minute, with the fire intensifying, would seem like a very long time for a passenger. It seemed long to me, as a mere video viewer.

If I'd been on that plane, I'd be getting off. I wouldn't dick around waiting for the evac order.

The pilots have the camera on a 777 300ER. Would have clearly showed the wing on fire. SIA idiots cannot think.

Hello,
I wonder whether any "emergency"was declared before the aircraft returned to Singapore.Surely this would have placed the fireservices on alert and respond in a much faster fashion than reported by some pax.?

Cheers

HPSOV L......That DV window is useful in more ways than one!..Unless of course it is raining!!!!!

Watching the video,incredible....unless the crew assessed that the rapid spread of fire around the complete airframe would present a higher risk to evacuating passengers,rather than awaiting the fire crew to douse the flames(benefit of the doubt here).
As some people may not realise,...every emergency situation comes with its own unique set of circumstances...Our trained reaction cannot,by virtue of the human condition,take into account ALL possibilities,therefore our company emergency procedures often,by necessity,tend to be generalised.

Human Perception is variable.CRM takes this into account,and we are taught to gather and incorporate all available information before making a final considered decision.

It would certainly seem that a passenger evacuation was the correct response here,incorporating already having emergency services on standby at the landing turnoff position(good training for them)...and..the non use of reverse thrust on the suspect engine,on landing.

In retrospect,no injuries,ergo..job well done...Hmmmmmmmmm.

The airfield plan calls for aircraft to land 02L and stop abeam the Fire Station at midpoint. The Fire Services wait on a very large pan adjacent to the runway. Ground Services wait on the opposite side where taxiways join the runway.

Most aircraft at MLW can stop just past the Fire Service PAN. I think that this would have been an overweight landing because he rolled well past midfield.

Just standing by for the relevance of that. In the meantime, we're missing the irrelevant METARs.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that since they only just got past Langkawi before heading back they'd be overweight. My attempts at being Sherlock Holmes are also totally irrelevant.

A fire engine is of no use stuck in the grass/mud. Water is heavy; 1,000 litres weighs 1 tonne. Better to stick to the hard stuff methinks.