British Airways jet catches fire in Las Vegas. Have you seen this?

2015-09-08T20:27:07-04:00

Pretty scary. Not a lot of info yet.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/08/us/las-vegas-british-airways-fire/index.html

British Airways plane catches fire at Las Vegas airport - CNN.com

A British Airways flight caught fire on the runway at the Las Vegas airport Tuesday, sending 13 people to local hospitals for treatment.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 8 at 2015 8:27 PM

2015-09-08T20:27:39-04:00

Saw this earlier and this is home. Hopefully no one was injured

Response by Lt Col Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 8 at 2015 8:58 PM

2015-09-08T20:58:59-04:00

That's one of the more catastrophic engine fires I have seen. Usually they are Bennie in the sense that everything generally stays contained in the Nacelle. The crews are able to shutdown the engine and blow fire retardant in the N1 stage fan. This one did not stay contained in the nacelle area.

If I were to guess there was either a fuel manifold rupture near the nacelle jacket or possibly catastrophic failure of a hydraulic pump. My gut goes with the fuel manifold.

They are lucky they are not dead. If that plane got airborne there is a high chance that flames could have breeched the fuel cell. The pilots did a good job aborting the takeoff. That is most critical time during takeoff. Once you reach V1 you have seconds to either continue to take off or abort. A plane like this probably gets to V1 within 15 to 30 seconds , not a lot of time for indecisions.

Response by Sgt Kelli Mays made Sep 8 at 2015 10:29 PM

2015-09-08T22:29:10-04:00

Yep, pretty scary alright.