Fire Tender deployment LHR 9/9
 

I'm sure it happens all the time, but any ideas why the fire tenders were crawling all over stand 123 at around 16:00 today (9/9). A BA 757 I think. No sign of serious drama, but we SLF are always curious . . .

Nothing to worry about.

There was smoke coming from a vehicle which was parked close to the aircraft, a 767, so the fire bobbies turned out as a precaution.

I boarded a BD 321 as SLF around 2100. Some minutes later Captain comes on to say we're being delayed until 2240 (slot) due to "an incident on the airfield". The delay failed to materialise and we pushed back about 10 minutes later. Incidently, we had a nice late Go-Around on approach to rwy 10 (DUB) due to "ATC decided to line another Aircraft up".

I'm sure it happens all the time. Happened to me doing a pre flight / turnaround check on a 737 many years ago at gatwick (LGW). Chief fire officer approached and asked if I minded if he used the A/C for an excersise, no probs with me as A/C was on a 2 hour turnaround, he promptly called in a brake fire on stand 10, in less than a minute I was surrounded by a substantial ammount of very p***ed of firemen who had been caught on a shift change. So, my point is, to see lots of blue lights and fire engines dashing around an airport does not allways constitute an emergency.

My colleagues and I used to take a certain amount of humor from watching / hearing the regular morning "elephant derby" ritual around the Granada airport (1984). But it was reassuring that they actually functioned.