FIRE! Not Simply Procedure

Fire and/or smoke in flight. It's every pilot's worse nightmare. It is much more than memory items and checklists. 

We train and practice often for engine problems and engine-out flight and landings. Fire and smoke -- not so much, or certainly not enough. During a "hangar flying" session among Instructor Pilots a couple of years ago, an interesting statistic was unveiled. 

Engine problems these days are fairly rare -- and generally benign. However, smoke/fire issues average 1,000 incidents per year! That's almost 3 per day worldwide!

Every pilot I have trained or worked with has been taught the basic non-normal priorities of AVIATE - NAVIGATE - COMMUNICATE. But what do those mean? With this posting, I want to focus on the AVIATE part of a fire/smoke issue. 

AVIATE, as I teach it, means CONTROL AND CONTAIN. Control means, of course, get the airplane's path, speed and power under control. In other words, make sure that you are in a controlled situation as much as possible before the CONTAIN part.

CONTAIN means things like memory items, starting a driftdown, beginning a dual engine failure descent, etc. For a short podcast about the CONTAIN part of a fire/smoke issue click here for a Link to Podbean. Then click on the Play arrow.

     Blessings -- Ron Allyn