Boeing batteries back under spotlight as 787 burns at Heathrow

Maybe it was one of these cigarettes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6psWFGYPHO8#t=05m30s

(I couldn't find a 'Mercan language version of Superagente for this episode.)

smouldering fires:

That's one long smoldering cig.

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~grein/smouldering.html

"A fire scenario that is particularly common is when a cigarette ignites a piece of upholstered furniture. This ignition leads to a smouldering fire that lasts for a long period of time (in the order of hours), spreading slowly and silently until critical conditions are attained and flames suddenly erupt"

"Smouldering of forest biomass can linger for days or weeks after flaming has ceased"

"After the attack, fire and subsequent collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, the colossal pile of debris left on the site smouldered for more than five months"

"The dramatic 1997 peat-land fires in Borneo made subsurface smouldering fires emerge as a global threat with significant economic, social and ecological impacts. In the summer of 2006, the Borneo peat fires came back"

Typically in a fatal cigarette fire, conversion to flame happens around an hour after the smouldering starts, but typically if it goes longer, somebody spots it and puts it out.

Re: No rear rest area

It's also reported for Ethiopian, which is a tad more relevant for this incidence than Etihad's configuration.

Re: No rear rest area

Etihad?

Re: APU

But never is it at this location in THIS plane

Re: A known problem

The APU is at the very end of the tail, while the fire was in front of the tailplane fin, so it's unlikely that this is directly connected to the APU. And the power cables are likely below the floor, not in the crown.

Re: A known problem

An article containing LarsG's unattributed quotes re residual heat causing problems in the APU is in Aviation Week.

It's worth a read if this kind of thing interests you:

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_05_27_2013_p35-581107.xml

History will show that too much has been subbed out, integration testing hasn't been properly done despite (because of?) all the delays, and the regulatory authorities have taken too much on trust.

Bean counter's dreamliner.

Re: A known problem

It is 30 feet away in this plane.

So that explains why it's so much more reliable!

"modern airliners have weight on wheels switches to perform the same function."

And how, exactly, does the Weight on Wheels switch work in comparison with an actual physical isolator in the cockpit? Does the WoW switch introduce extra complexity? What are the corresponding extra risks and how are they mitigated? Does a WoW switch even introduce a computerised system, whose impact on safety has not so far been recognised? I don't know the answers to these questions, I do know how bean counters think, and a 787 is a bean counter's dream. Not an engineer's.

"for all we know this was a member of the cabin crews' phone overheating so it may even be that the design of the plane isn't at fault."

If something like a phone overheating (or even a coffee machine overheating) causes this extent of structural damage, then it is ENTIRELY the plane designer/builders fault. You can build a plane in a way that small fires don't lead to large incidents (especially not large in-flight incidents). Or you can save some weight and cost by using cheaper lighter less fire resistant materials (in comparison with materials which have traditionally been used in commercial airliners). Which one would you rather fly in?

ETOPS rating at risk again already?

Bean counter's dreamliner.

"At the same time at this stage for all we know this was a member of the cabin crews' phone overheating so it may even be that the design of the plane isn't at fault."

If that's the amount of damage done by a small fire started by, say a phone battery or badly wired coffee heater in the galley, I'd say they have a bigger problem than the batteries, given that it would have appear to have gone through the hull. There have been a great many reservations expressed about the use of composites and their heat resistant properties.

WR963...

...hope to eventually see her return to flight (though hopefully avoid deserts...). Then maybe they can bring it up to Elvington to compare with the Nimrod. And the one at Coventry is a Mk2, so it could be nice to park up next to the Halifax to compare it with the Lincoln - they did a similar thing a few years ago with Lancaster and B17.

and the motto for the Shackleton squadron was "8 screws are better than two blow jobs"

ethiopia is not a proper country and a full infrastructure, all the charities should send in some administrators and bring abit more money in from themselves

a few spread out raises of taxes on the airline and other places, could bring in enough for water pipes and treatment plants etc from their own government money