Causes of Air Crash

Fire

Updated: 2010-09-02 10:18

Safety regulations control aircraft materials and the requirements for automated fire safety systems. Usually these requirements take the form of required tests. The tests measure flammability and the toxicity of smoke. When the tests fail, they fail on a prototype in an engineering laboratory, rather than in an aircraft.

Fire on board the aircraft, and more especially the toxic smoke generated, have been the cause of accidents. Two years later a fire on the runway caused the loss of 55 lives, 48 from the effects of incapacitating and subsequently lethal toxic gas and smoke, in the 1985 British Airtours Flight 28M. That accident raised serious concerns relating to survivability, something that prior to 1985 had not been studied in such detail.An electrical fire on Air Canada Flight 797 in 1983 caused the deaths of 23 of the 46 passengers, resulting in the introduction of floor level lighting to assist people to evacuate a smoke-filled aircraft. 

The swift incursion of the fire into the fuselage and the layout of the aircraft impaired passengers' ability to evacuate, with areas such as the forward galley area becoming a bottle-neck for escaping passengers, with some dying very close to the exits. A large amount of research into evacuation and cabin and seating layouts was carried at Cranfield Institute to try to measure what makes a good evacuation route, which led to the seat layout by Overwing exits being changed by mandate and the examination of evacuation requirements relating to the design of galley areas. The use of smoke hoods or misting systems were also examined although both were rejected.

At one time fire fighting foam paths were laid down before an emergency landing, but the practice was considered only marginally effective, and concerns about the depletion of fire fighting capability due to pre-foaming led the United States FAA to withdraw its recommendation in 1987.

The cargo holds of most airliners are equipped with "fire bottles" (essentially remote-controlled fire extinguishers) to combat a fire that might occur in the baggage holds, below the passenger cabin. In May 1996 ValuJet Airlines Flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades a few minutes after takeoff after a fire broke out in the forward cargo hold. All 110 aboard were killed.