CoolP, Short of loosing a wing, there is nothing worse than a fire in the plane, because you really don't know what you have. With a passenger flight you have extra firefighters in the flight attendants, but the two pilots in the cargo plane have no idea what is causing the smoke, and have little or no way to get to the area of the fire to put it out.

One flight a while back had a small fire in the cabin which the F/A's were able to handle very quickly. The source of the fire was a ladies hand bag. In flight, the woman replaced a 9 volt battery in some electronic device. She threw the "old" battery in her hand bag and placed the bag under her seat. The battery came in contact with a coin and shorted out. It had enough life to get very hot and start a small fire in the bag. Thank's to the quick work of the cabin team the fire was put out and the flight pressed on.

There was a MD-80 flying from some southern city in the US to the north. Someone went into the lav and smoked. They tossed the butt in the waste bin where is started to smolder. In a very short time the bin was fully involved and smoke filled the plane. Even though the cabin team tried to fight the fire, the pilot decided to make and emergency descent and land in KCVG. That was a life saving decision because the fire was still going strong and only by landing is a very short time was everybody able to survive. Remember, only the pilots have limited smoke protection with their mask and goggles. The passenger O₂ mask is only a very small amount of oxygen mixed with ambient air - no help in smoke conditions.

Who knows why two well trained pilots passed by a place to land and continued to a distant airport? Maybe it was that they were more familiar with the departure airport, or maybe they wanted to go where company personal could assist, we will never know.

CoolP asked for another story...

One fine morning in LIMC, we were getting ready to fly our flight back to KJFK with a full load of people. We observed the inbound flight land and taxi to the gate and noticed the left engine reverser on this 767-200 still opened. Since the 767 reverser is operated by hydraulics the pilots don't try to force it back as we did with the 707, 727 air driven reverser. As the people were unloading, the mechanics opened the left cowl to see what the problem could be. The cowl on the 767 is pretty big and uses hydraulic power to open and close. After messing around for a while they decided they could not fix the problem in MXP, so the stowed & pinned the reverser and closed the cowl. In the cockpit, the left reverser was wired in the stowed position and the log book entry made to dispatch the plane with the left engine reverser inop.

The plane took off at max takeoff weight and climbed out of the airport. I was flying and if you are familiar with MXP (Milan), you know that the Alps are just a short distance to the north of the airport. If you cannot climb to a certain altitude by the NDB, you will need to circle to gain altitude before you can begin to cross the Alps and head northwest. After a turn in the pattern, we proceeded toward our ocean crossing. Eight hours later we are nearing our destination and begin the descent. We are just passing abeam Boston on the approach to KJFK and are advised by JKF approach to keep up our speed as we are number one in the sequence for east arrivals.

This works for us since we all had a commuter flight or long car ride ahead, so early is good! As we descended down to FL-240 a small light on the center console flickered on. The light was REV ISOL. It just flickered once or twice and no EICAS message appeared. We both looked at each other with the same look... what's that mean? I opened the flight handbook and found one small sentence that said this light shows that hydraulic pressure is being applied to keep the reverser closed. While we were trying to digest this information, the REV amber light above the engine instruments lit up. A few seconds passed and the plane lurched and a loud bang was heard. I grabbed the controls, and very slowly eased the left throttle closed. There is a knock on the cockpit door. It is the second co-pilot who was seated in the cabin. His face was very telling. He said, "it's gone! The cowling is gone!" Don't forget we were leading the pack into KJFK doing just about barber pole. Pretty exciting! As we looked around the instruments we could not see anything amiss. The engine was running just fine. There was no fluid loss, or control problem, but a very large piece of our 767 was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

ATC asked if we slowed down, and we told him about our adventure and asked to set up for a low pass at KJFK so the mechanics could look the plane over before we moved the flaps or gear. We were vectored to a make a pass over runway 22R at KJFK since the landing runway was 13L/R. We descended to 300 feet and slowed to just above no flap speed. The ground folks looked at us through binoculars and said they observed what looked like some parts missing on the underside of the left inboard wing. We decided all we really needed to land was the gear, so we slowly started a climb back to traffic pattern altitude and lowered the wheels. Normal extension!  :) Now we tried the first notch of flaps. Also normal, no control problems and no fluid loss. We used normal flaps for landing and I made one of my better slick jobs and greased it on!  :P

The mechanics were waiting for us as we turned off the runway. We shut down the left engine and awaited their report. When he returned to the headset he reported extensive damage to the left wing leading edge and underside parts of the wing. Two large flap track canoes were missing along with the engine cowl. I ask him if he wanted to tow us into the gate and he said..."you flew if #%&*# in you can darn well taxi it the rest of the way.  :o

Now, what I did not tell you was my announcement to the passengers right after the event. I don't lie to the passengers - ever! If we are flying around thunderstorms, that's what I call them, not rain showers. So I told the folks what had happened and what we intended to do - like the low pass etc,. I can tell you every person listened to my every word during that announcement.

Epilogue: MXP said they pinned the reverser... I wonder! The cowling was not closed - all the way. As we made our descent into the N. Y. we were asked to keep up our speed. Some how through vibration, air pressure, who knows - the reverser section wanted to move back. The REV ISOL (reverser isolation) gizmo tried to do its thing. As soon as that cowl moved just a hair, the air caught it and it was bye bye cowl. If the cowl had departed the aircraft over the wing, some one else would be doing these stories on the forum. The cowl ripped off and went under the wing missing the tail, but destroying the large leading edge device and big flap covers. The plane flew just fine.

Lou