dutchroll

I'm unaware of anyone who has instinctively tried to open an emergency exit on the ground during an emergency. I'd be interested to see it, because I'll bet any money that they (if they could get past the door primary and then figure out how it opens) would leap straight out - which would be a fascinating result as the slide is still unfurling and hasn't inflated yet. I am aware of some instances where passengers with - ahem - shall we say "slight psychological problems" have tried to open a door on the ground or in flight. While conceivably they could do it on the ground, it ain't gonna happen in flight no matter how hard you try!

Fair enough. No probs. I guess I was trying to say that I'd be very surprised to ever hear a fire crew recommend an evacuation, however they might well pass on info which led to that immediate decision. "Your whole right wing is on fire" would be an example. Talking directly to them is also slightly more complicated than you might think and requires you to use another radio. They generally have their own frequency which you might need to get from ATC depending on where you are. BTW, you are absolutely right in your first post that cabin crew instructions must be obeyed by the passengers!

It's certainly not the fire chief's call as to whether to evacuate because he has no idea of any other factors the crew are dealing with inside. Also his idea of "one minute" might not actually be one minute, and seconds count in these cases. I've even known a fire tender to go off the taxiway and get bogged on its way to the aircraft. It's a requirement that we practice emergency landings in the simulator regularly. This involves dealing with the problem, running checklists, calling for fire services, communicating with ATC, and making the call to evacuate (or not). Although there are many variables in the way things get done, I've never heard of one running like that. We don't have time in these situations to speculate on and add up the number of seconds various things might take. It's either a dangerous enough situation with the aircraft to warrant an evacuation, or it's not.

I'd be interested in whether SQ have the equivalent of an "alert PA" like we do. This is what we would use in these circumstances. It is, for example, SOP after a rejected takeoff but can be used at any time and is often briefed in non normal situations. It is from the cockpit after the plane stops and goes "Attention, all passengers remain seated and await further instructions". It serves two purposes: 1) For the passengers, it's self explanatory and (hopefully) stops them getting up. 2) For the crew it is a coded message. To them it means "Your pilots know there is a problem and we are gathering information to make a decision. Check outside your door windows. Report to us if you observe anything non-normal.

Nothing in that ATC conversation surprises me, though the last part of the transcript is wrong - therein lie the problems with getting these things off the web. There is absolutely no way on earth that Butterworth Control can clear SQ368 to land prior to a hand-off to Lumpur Radar. Absolutely not possible. I suspect the controller said something to the effect of "ok then, Singapore 368 contact Lumpur Radar 132.8". Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't a landing clearance as they are over Malaysian airspace there heading south near Penang/Butterworth and have several more agencies to go through before they get to Singapore Tower. The fire did not break out in flight, but upon landing. With major leaks of any description including oil, fuel or hydraulic, this would (should!) not be unexpected by any crew. This type of scenario is discussed dozens of times over during training sessions. Big leaks from around engine pods or the inner wing section where vital valves and plumbing for these services are, also happen to be in close vicinity to wheel wells and thus wheel brakes. I know for our own company and I assume for many others too, it's just improbable given that they knew it was a big leak that they would not discuss or at least mention this possibility prior to landing and have a heightened awareness of it. We'd get our a*se caned in the simulator for not mentioning that at the very least. Although there might not be much you could do about it in flight, you will be all psyched up to rapidly gather as much information as possible in the eventuality that a fire of some type does start on landing. This particular segment of ATC comms stops well before landing and way before they even talk to any Singapore control agencies at all. So the vital communication both during their approach and upon landing after the fire broke out between ATC and the crew is not available. That communication is where we would be able to determine who was aware of what, so this tape tells us nothing much at all unfortunately. One more thing: I have read discussion online from people saying "well maybe the safest course of action was to keep the passengers on board". That might be true in the case of a garden-variety wheel brake fire, but this argument doesn't hold up under the circumstances. An unextinguished fire spreading along the length of a wing which also contains many thousands of kilograms of fuel (even with fuel dumping) is not a scenario which justifies a "safer staying on board" conclusion. Unless of course they were unaware of the extent of the fire, which is of course a possibility. Then the question becomes: why was this so? I remain as puzzled as I was when I first saw the reports. I have suspicions about the general way things might have happened, but they are biased and I won't air them here.

Kinda funny, posting bollocks about bollocks...............

That's not quite all we know. We know the aircraft cabin filled with fumes in flight after the oil leak. We know the aircraft caught fire upon landing, with fire spreading along the entire length of the right wing. We know that fire did not self-extinguish. It continued to burn until put out by emergency services. We know the passengers remained on board through all of this. We know the fire caused severe damage.

The pilots can't see much, however the crew are trained to be having a good look outside their door windows in situations like this and they are stationed all the way down both sides of the fuselage. Also the tower can see plenty. This is stuff you train for all the time in the sim. The pilots must have known there was a fire, as emergency services were called. In addition to any fire indications in the cockpit, we would use ATC and the cabin crew to ascertain the extent of the fire. Most likely in a 2 pilot scenario the Captain would himself communicate with one of those sides and delegate the F/O to communicate to the other, or get the F/O and the 3rd pilot (if carried) to communicate with those people if they were a heavy crew. After getting all the information there would be a quick assessment of the potential severity. The mere mention from either that there were significant flames or smoke spreading around the wing would likely be enough to justify an evac. Yes it is one possibility that there was a breakdown in communication between cabin and cockpit, or ATC and the cockpit, or even both. I'm not blaming any side in particular but it does seem that a ground evac was fully warranted from the outside. The question is, did the information on the extent of the flames get to the pilots? If not, why not? If it did, how did they arise at their decision? Was it downplayed? Was it conflicting or confusing? The investigation will hopefully answer these, but to me personally this scenario is puzzling. It's dangerous territory when the fire is not contained, as it clearly wasn't.

I can understand holding off an evacuation order for a wheel brake fire, or a fire contained in the hot end of an engine, or a couple of other scenarios. Once the Captain gives the order, there's no way to cancel it so the decision is not taken lightly. But I can't for the life of me work out what happened here when photos and video show a substantial spread of flames and everyone stayed on board until it was extinguished. As has already been mentioned, evacuation delays and indecision have led to fatalities in the past.

Not formally. There's no internal aviation industry mechanism to get accident investigation information before it's released to the public. However we have a better "grapevine" than the public does by virtue of relationships with staff at other airlines. These incidents are often analysed by our own safety and training departments when the investigations are complete to see whether there might be pertinent lessons for us. That can lead to training or assessment modules inserted into recurrent simulator sessions.

I have to say that if I was in the cockpit and saw that view out the window, my next words would be "we need to get out of here now!" I'll be interested to see what communication transpired within the cockpit and from external sources to the cockpit. It'll all be on the CVR. That fire may well be (and probably was) oil related, but it's not confined to the hot end of the engine. It is burning along the length of the wing. That changes the scenario completely. The rapid fire service response at Changi may well have saved them here. I think that probably means seatbelts must be fastened prior to the evacuation test being carried out. Otherwise the timing and scenario is not realistic.

I'm perplexed why they didn't evacuate. The evacuation checklist calls for the engines to be shutdown before ordering the evacuation, so that is not a factor if the checklists are correctly followed. There is (or should be) no consideration whatsoever for what the fire trucks are doing. That is their problem. The crew's problem is to get the passengers out of the aircraft before they burn to death or suffocate. When an evacuation is ordered on the ground, the Captain automatically hands responsibility for safely opening the exits to door primary crew members. It is (at least in our company) drilled into them until they bleed from the ears to "check safe to open" then if it is, open their exit. If not, they keep it shut and redirect passengers to the next closest exit. This is to account for fire or smoke blocking a particular exit/evacuation area. From what I've seen there is every indication that a ground evacuation was warranted. Again just speaking from our company's perspective, the pilots would be quickly getting information from a) the cabin crew, as to whether they were seeing flames or parts of the aircraft burning and b) from the tower or the fire crews as to whether they could see the aircraft on fire. That fire could've rapidly spread in seconds with disastrous consequences. The Captain's explanation as to why he didn't order an evacuation would want to be a good one!

Oh here you go Gnarly. I couldn't resist a 60 second trawl of Ann Coulter's website (of whom I imagine you're a great fan)! Fan comment from lockerdome.com linked by, who else, anncoulter.com: "Yes! We desperately need Donald Trump. Look what's happening to our country since Obama has become president. We never heard of ISIS before him. Now we have ISIS in all 50 states." Oh here we go from a regular contributor: "make america great again by following the law of the land....stop and deport all muslims" A slightly unconstitutional slant on the "law of the land" and general principles of freedom. Want me to start quoting comments on Trump from stormfront.org? Or is that website just a figment of my imagination?

Lol. Comments from the super-coach, and an interesting insight into your emotional maturity in the way you phrase it. Problem is, while not independently confirmed, it's totally credible coming from that crowd. Have a read of some of the statements on blogs and message boards from the more extreme Trump fans, Gnarly, then get back to me. I've already read them. You want me to post some of them, together with the links? Or would you prefer to believe they don't exist and just leave it at that?

If you sift through her own website, what Pauline says is far less worrying than some of the things her fans say....... You need to own the type of people you attract to your politics. Trump needs to note that too. Witnessed from a Trump supporter at one of his rallies: "I wish I had my piece on me dude - I wanna shoot someone so bad!" interspersed with the "Kill all Muslims!" comments.

To address a few of your points (I hope to use sound reasoning, but where they're just opinion I'll state that): The "love it or leave" banners, articles, memes etc are predominantly publicised by certain partisan political groups. Social media is littered with them and even a precursory glance shows the alignment of the group saying it. Whenever someone shares one of these things, I always go to the source and have a read through their stuff. It's eye opening. Whenever it's posted via a link, I go to the "about" menu before doing anything else, unless I already know what it says. This is often very telling too. Straight away the biases are revealed. Re Trump and Brexit: people do weird things when they're angry about life, the universe and everything. A lot of that includes doing stuff without really putting a huge amount of thought into the broader consequences. It's like the guy who lashes out and punches someone who is irritating him and feels great about it. Until he gets arrested for it. Then loses his job when the boss finds out. Then he gets convicted and goes to prison. Then the bank repossesses his house because he can't make the payments because he lost his job. Then because he's lost the house his wife takes the kids and leaves him. Etc etc. Broader consequences just keep flowing from one rash decision and I'll bet he never thought about a solitary one of them. My opinion is that if Trump is elected, millions of people who currently love him are going to have a very, very different view of him 4 years down the track unless he makes some huge changes in the way he approaches things. I say that because when you listen carefully to Trump, he talks about miraculously fixing all the stuff which is apparently worrying people without giving you even the faintest clue how he will do it or how it will actually work. He's also a braggart in the extreme, and I don't think I've ever met a braggart who was even half as good at doing things they've boasted about, when it all came down to it. I honestly don't believe that your broad assertion that "most politicians are swayed by the left leaning do gooders" has any significant evidence at all to back it up. Without boring you with the whole history of why I joined the Air Force as a pilot after finishing Year 12, you are incorrect. It would be true, however, to say that I have taken a very broad interest in both military history generally, and military aviation in particular, since I was quite young. Re supporting one country versus another, or one company versus another: There's a very distinct difference between actively supporting another country and sabotaging your own, and being highly critical of things going on within your own. As far as my employment goes, Mr J has endured some quite frankly withering, blistering, and highly deserved criticism of the way he runs his company from us. No one has yet been asked to love it or leave. I enjoy my flying, but I think my boss is a corporate psychopath and a manipulative a***hole. Some of his management team take that a step further. I once even emailed the Group Executive (who reports directly to the CEO) and told him it was pretty rich of him to demand cultural change when he and his henchmen had been guilty of appalling behaviour towards their employees in the preceding months (I used that exact language). I was invited to a meeting with him but refused to attend.

Lol! Generally not the educated and caring people I know! However I've come to realise over the years that, regardless of political ideology, "education" and "caring about the country and fellow humans" don't necessarily go hand in hand.

An overbank is one which sets the GPWS bank angle warning off because it then becomes flagged on the quick access recorder as an exceedance and is reportable. On the B767 the automatic voice warnings occur at 35•, 40• and 45• angle of bank. We got to 40. That might not look particularly bad in a small plane but in a big jet you go "oh sh**" It's enough for the passengers to notice. Classic human factors. Eyes on the clocks while I was hand flying after departure in cloud, but we exited into bright sunshine and a dead flat cloud top stretching as far as you could see while still in the climbing turn and I took my eyes off the clocks for about 2 seconds. That was all it needed. If it was an Airbus it wouldn't let you go past 67 degrees no matter how hard you hold the stick to one side or the other (assuming the flight control computers are all functioning). If you went past 33 degrees and released the stick, it would return to 33 degrees bank automatically and stay there.

Every culture has its problems but these are very often related to local community problems. The local white Aussie kids here (we have almost no immigrant population in the region - all our dole bludgers and criminals are white Australians) torched a stolen Audi on the side of the road the other night. The most disturbing thing? When I saw it parked there the previous night in the general area they dump all their stolen cars every weekend, I thought "I bet they'll come back and set fire to it soon". And I'm no Nostradamus. So given that it's so common and "normal" here, should I take it as an established part of our Aussie culture? Because if I was an immigrant and didn't know the country any better, I'd think it was! I'd think we're all a bunch of petty thieves with no jobs, no aspirations, and no respect for other people's property.

"handouts for a few hundred years". Not exactly accurate...... Which, if true, means that Scotland with its large blue collar workforce should've voted "leave". But they didn't. Both pre-poll and post-poll analysis showed voting clearly correlated with age. Younger generations overwhelmingly voted to remain while older generations voted to leave. Almost every area with more than 30% residents not born in the UK clearly voted "remain". This completely defies the principle that areas with lots of immigrants would vote to leave.

Judging by the murmurings from Northern Ireland and Scotland, "Britain" might actually cease to exist as we know it in the not-too-distant future. While I don't particularly care what Britain does, I see the "leave" vote being based mostly on emotion, rather than practicality or modern reality. When you're voting emotionally, you need to be careful what you wish for. Unintended consequences are common.

^^ point being Bex, that entrenched beliefs are entrenched beliefs irrespective of contradictory evidence, no matter which side of politics you prefer. Refusing to acknowledge evidence which contradicts what you believe is a human condition based largely on a combination of fear, superstition, and ignorance (both deliberate and unintentional).

One of the things which I've found quite irritating in the last couple of years is this "love it or leave" crap, which is purely politically driven. 1. Just because someone disagrees with the political direction a country is taking on one or more issues, or even generally, does not mean they are disloyal or do not love their own country. 2. I hope it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that the proportion of the population which does disagree on the political direction of a country changes each time a new government is elected. By default, the "love it or leave" brigade become, from time to time, the ones who are complaining loudest. Yet strangely they never seem to heed their own advice. 3. Pauline Hanson can be pro-Aussie jobs all she likes. Personally I think she's not very bright. And just because I think that, does not mean I'm anti Aussie jobs. Unlike many others in her fan club, I've done my time serving this country and I'm entitled to think lowly of any individual politician and any number of their principles for whatever reason I like. Anyone implying I should leave the country as a consequence of that can take a flying leap. Nonsense. I have friends and relatives in the USA and have spent a lot of time there myself. I've never known anyone on the far right there (which is a lot of people) to change their minds in the face of being shown to be wrong. Ever. That goes for political topics. Religious ones are just as bad. Doesn't matter what evidence there is that certain far right religious views are simply wrong. They will never admit it. Ever.

......well I do have an aerobatics endorsement.

Not all aviation. General Aviation, yes perhaps that's true for various reasons and we could have a never-ending debate! However I don't think it applies to all Australian aviation. I know in my "iconic 95 year old Australian aviation company" (no I'm not allowed to mention its name or I get in trouble!) we have a very positive self-reporting culture. I suppose it would be easy to blame the QAR system (QAR = "Quick Access Recorder", a black box which flags and automatically reports a gross exceedance including company-imposed limitations) however this general culture has always been around in my experience. The company encourages a system where self-reporting inadvertent violations, which includes errors of judgement but not flagrant/deliberate gross violations, results in no sanctions. The incident is merely added to a database for trend monitoring and might end up being reported in a safety newsletter, or even being included in a simulator session for everyone's education & training. An example was when I once over-banked a B767 being a bit exuberant and distracted when popping out of a cloud layer while hand-flying, resulting in the "bank angle" GPWS master warning, a QAR flag, etc etc. Self reported. Called them on the phone the next day to explain what happened and Flight Safety Department said "yeah no probs - watch out next time - have a nice day". I never heard anything after that. My experience in the RAAF was similar. If you screwed up, you reported it. At worst, if it was a gratuitous stuff-up, you might have to give a briefing to everyone on the next training day about the lessons learned and how not to do it again. So the flight safety reporting culture is around. Just depends where you're looking! For the record, I think CASA handles the "no blame" culture badly however the ATSB are an independent agency and I think they're quite well intentioned. During a recent investigation in which I was involved (indirectly), they were very clear in general discussion about not wanting to assign blame for anything, but simply trying to determine the root causes of the accident.