A 320, what would be your course of action?
 

You are cruising in FL 11.100m over Russia. Your destination is 200 NM out. By chance you notice the red aft cargo fire light on the overhead panel illuminated. No ECAM warning, just the light.

What's your course of action?

1. Request the Purser to the flight deck, have a crew member monitor conditions above the AFT cargo, floor temperature or smoke.

2. Monitor AFT cargo temp if available.

3. Check FCOM

4. Notify company and ATC of situation.

5. Unless smoke or heat present, continue to destination.:confused:

200 NM away? That's an easy one. Of course you do what Dream Land says. But 200 NM is near TOD. So descent with high speed.

A problematic situation is when you are in the middle of a flight, and there's no airport in the vicinity. Or even high terrain. Or water.

Dani

I missed to say, suitable alternate just below....

With a quick cabin check the decision to utilize the diversion field or press on could be made quickly.

So a fire there would show up as smoke/heat in the cabin and that's a more reliable indication than the sensor? Press on even with an alternate below? Sounds brave to me but I'm only a lapsed glider pilot.

Thx Dream Land and others,

that's exactly what we did (FCOM was no help).

In addition

6. Pull/reset CB of both SDCU to trigger the warning again (only red light appeared)

7. Discharged bottles!

8. High Speed to destination

9. Fire truck on stby

10. Kept cargo doors closed until passenger disembarked

11. Had a couple of beers in hotel:)

Good job, can you tell us what caused the warning.:ok:

No unfortuneatly not. Engineering replaced both SDCU, that's all I know.

On a very good CRM course a few years ago, I learned this frightning statistic :
On average, an uncontrollable fire, becomes none surviveble in 19 minutes !!!!
Gentlemen, think about that for a minute, 19 minutes !
Then you can forget about all your professional training and the sofisticated aircraft you fly.
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN CASE OF AN UNCONTROLLABLE FIRE IS TIME = GET ON THE GROUND !
200nm is 35-40 minutes, including approach, so with an alternate below you, what were you thinking about ? or are a BA B747/3 engine capt ?
I am shocked

On a very good CRM course a few years ago, I learned....

to

- collect all facts
- take any help (cabin staff, ATC, manuals, engineering etc.)
- not to believe/rely on a single instrument/light/chime

etc, etc.

"- collect all facts
- take any help (cabin staff, ATC, manuals, engineering etc.)
- not to believe/rely on a single instrument/light/chime"
I know hetfield, that is what we all do as captains, when making descisions that is not black/white.
There is only a BIG difference when dealing with a possible uncontrollable fire, compared to must other emergencies, and that is the lack of control you as a captain have when things have developed beyond your capability, and this development comes VERY fast. Therefore, if you have indication of a possible fire, you HAVE to act very quick, and consider it is for real.
It is quite another thing with e.g. a low oil press warning, where you have so many other indications to back up your descision, and the consequence of shutting an engine down, does not compare with an uncontrollable fire.
You did not have a fire on your flight, your had some faulthy indication. If the fire had been there in the aft cargo hold, do you think you would have been around today to teld us your story, after trying to fly another 200 nm ?
The statistics says no......

6 of 1 & half a dozen of the other between the two sides of the case.

Sometimes due to commercial pressures, time taken to descend from cruise and brief for an unknown airport (who in Russia, may or may not in reality have the fire cover you'd expect :eek: etc) with potentially high MSAs, the prospect of continuing can look quite attractive.

At the end of the day, the decision remains with the crews. My concern would be whether the fault was not the SDCU but infact the ECAM! From 11 100m with a high speed descent at close on Vmo/Mmo to a field that you are familiar with and with 2 sets of approach plates (some companies only carry the one set for alternates) may be almost as quick as overhead div.

From a two crew perspective, it would be much easier to get back into the loop (and remain SA) at a familiar field from a NPF aspect after briefing the crew, pax, company etc.

My answer: no.

hetfield - please couldyou clarify:

1. Are you saying that you would, in this situation, need heat or smoke to be detected by a member of the cabin crew before you acted?
2. What was the distance (time) to nearest divert?

Thanks.

1. Wait a minute, calm down. If the ECAM would have produced a clear warning the answer is: NO

2. Like I said, we were just overhead a "suitable" alternate. BUT neither me nor the First Officer had ever been there. Weather was at CAT 1 limits, icing conditions, questionable fire fighting category (how can I know in split of minutes?)

Sorry - I missed your additional post "suitable alternate just below".

If your high level logic is to effectively wait for some kind of 'quorum' from the multiple aircraft monitoring systems before deciding that you have a "serious event" then as 7373 indicated, you leave yourself open to the risk that the ability of these (other) systems has itself been compromised by the fire.

Press-on may well be your chosen course of action, knowing that the incident is real, but you chose to press on becuase you did not consider it to be truly a valid alert (no ECAM confirmation).

If you have a single alert for the most serious event you could face in an aircraft, would you not agree that the course of action that is best is the one that gets you on the ground as quickly as possible. Other factors (firefighting ability of airport etc) are secondary?

P.S. I am not un-calm, and greatly respect your integrity in making the post in the first place.

@tallsandwich

Are you familiar with the ECAM ?

Sufficiently familiar with ECAM to go into details: No.
Do feel free to enlighten me, however whether it is a piece of junk or not does not change the CRM reasoning...

But remember, if the fire would be uncontrollable, you would have more warnings, hints etc, that something awful is going on.

And besides, a fire doesnt become uncontrollable very fast in a plane, you know. it takes many minutes before a minor fire would get worse.

So if you have Fire warnings, lights, smoke, horns whining, i bet you wouldn't even consider to push straight to your destination. ;)

And, in case of a 19 minute-surrivetime, i think you would get the plane to the divertplace straight under you. Remembe, this would be a "Mayday", and regulations can be overseen in situations like that. :)

(Am i right? Im not a pilot, groundcrew, F/O, or anything. Just a guy that wants to be a Pilot. :))