FedEx MD11 booboo in FLL?

MikeD said:
Was 7 on that flight, but depending on configuration and cargo, could be 20+, with even people in the cargo area.

The problem is, it takes some effort to toss out bags....finding them, unsecuring them, etc. That's all stuff that takes you away from the door where there's breathable air, prior to heading to the cockpit directly to egress, or even jumping out the L1 if its bad enough. In the video, you can see a delay between people exiting out the cockpit, and in that delay time, bags are being tossed out. That's time when the priority seems to be bags instead of people. There was a 65 second delay between the second person to egress, and the third person to egress......in that 65 seconds, bags are being tossed out instead of people coming out.

Smoke/fumes is nothing to screw around with, especially with possible HAZMAT cargo, and even moreso with no breathing apparatus being worn. So in that situation, doing work that's completely unnecessary, instead of attempting to stay as clear of the smoke as possible by an open door while waiting, is completely pointless and cannot be justified.

Too, ARFF had no idea how many were onboard at the time, as they hadn't gotten that info by the time they arrived on scene. Had someone gone down in the smoke/fumes, not only would they be difficult to find, but now effort has to be taken to go offensive (as opposed to a full defensive fight) by the ARFF crew and enter the aircraft, when the reason for having to now perform a rescue is due to having spent time tossing bags and Christmas presents? When otherwise one wouldn't have been needed? Now also, effort is being taken to rescue, and taken away from firefighting. The initial responding units only had about 4 firefighters, totaling to about 6-7 firefighters when the delayed ARFF vehicles finally arrived, and entry for rescue is a minimum 2-man job.

There's a reason both the NTSB was highly critical of this action during egress, as well as the company after the fact. Because tl;dr...the juice was in no way worth the squeeze regarding unnecessary work even while waiting to egress. Cheap or stupid......one or the other, or both, is definitely a fitting criticism..

Finding 15:

Most of the FedEx pilots on board the accident airplane showed poor judgment and exposed themselves to unnecessary risk when they delayed their evacuation from a burning airplane to salvage personal items.

On a positive note, 647s accident was the first ever operational use of a Snozzle boom fire equipment in a real aircraft accident. Worked great. Ironically, it was on one of the ARFF trucks that was delayed by ATC.
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And a response from a FedEx MD-11 guy from another board to a very similar post:

I believe that to be bull****.

I believe they were standing in a tilted smoked-up cockpit. I believe there was confusion as to when the ropes were available. I believe that the seats were up and locked and that the crew had to step on the center console and the seat bottoms just to get to the windows. It's not like they could have stood in a straight line.

Maybe the guys in the courier compartment didn't notice that the ropes were available. It's 15 feet or more up there, there's not exactly a light that comes on when there's no weight on the rope.

I'm sorry but this portion of the report doesn't pass the smell test. I saw the smoke that was engulfing that fuselage. The smell alone must have been amazing. Nobody - no pilot anyway - is going to purposefully delay their egress for 63 seconds to save a bag. It was confusion, noise, smoke and contorting ergonomics.
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Its one thing to judge a group of pilots from the high perch of one's ARFF vehicle or the boardroom of the NTSB. It's entirely another to be in a very compact smoke filled aircraft with 6 other people at an odd angle with very limited room to move and very limited egress options.

In the end, everyone made it out and we have another NTSB report that we can read and speculate on how much better we would've handled it.
 
TallFlyer said:
And a response from a FedEx MD-11 guy from another board to a very similar post:


Its one thing to judge a group of pilots from the high perch of one's ARFF vehicle or the boardroom of the NTSB. It's entirely another to be in a very compact smoke filled aircraft with 6 other people at an odd angle with very limited room to move and very limited egress options.

In the end, everyone made it out and we have another NTSB report that we can read and speculate on how much better we would've handled it.
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We should be more critical of the female FO who side loaded the hell out of the gear enough to cause its collapse and subsequent run into the grass.
 
TallFlyer said:
And a response from a FedEx MD-11 guy from another board to a very similar post:


Its one thing to judge a group of pilots from the high perch of one's ARFF vehicle or the boardroom of the NTSB. It's entirely another to be in a very compact smoke filled aircraft with 6 other people at an odd angle with very limited room to move and very limited egress options.

In the end, everyone made it out and we have another NTSB report that we can read and speculate on how much better we would've handled it.
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For the random MD-11 guy's comment, if conditons were that much confusion, then go out the exit you have in front of you: the L1. May have to hang from the door and drop to the ground, but if there's that much confusion as to whether there is a escape tape available at the moment way up in the cockpit, why wait while breathing toxic fumes and not know? Take the open exit you're already at. Unass the aircraft.

The guys at the L1 door were at an open door. Granted, it's slide was detached and on the ground. But to be at an open door, then going back inside to a smoke/fumes-filled environment to salvage bags and personal items....even while waiting, is nothing short of crazy. The delay shown on the tape, is indicitive of a delay taken to salvage items, not a delay in waiting for egress. And the fact that all crewmembers bags and personal items were gone from the plane, including those that had been secured or stored away (something that takes time to remove), is also indicitive of making a specific effort to salvage personal items. Lets call it for what it is.

And yeah, from my ARFF truck when i'm pulling up, I'd be a little pissed seeing people......pax, but crewmembers especially......wasting time in doing the exact thing we criticize passengers for doing, and now creating more work for me and my crew (potential rescue or having to chase you around the cabin) that shouldn't need to be done, but may have to due to your unnecessary actions. It's one thing to play the cards I'm dealt when I show up on scene, it's an entire another to have to play the hands other people create who should know better such as crew. Don't make my job any more difficult than it needs to be, especially by putting your own life at risk for nothing, and in turn causing potentially more work, delayed/reduced fire attack ability due to now having to do other operations, and more risk for my team. All for personal items.

Again, if we're going to sit here on our high and mighty perch and criticize the "peon pax" who film an egress or grab a bag while waiting in line to get out of their passenger plane; then we damn well better hold flight crews to the same standard (who should know bettter), especially when said crew does it in the middle of a smoke/fire filled plane.....when they're already at an exit in breathable air and they knowingly go back into an IDLH environment for Christmas presents and personal bags instead of just for egress. That, my friend, is called rank hypocrisy.

From the NTSB, and it's pretty hard to disagree with. And there's a reason for this finding and for the company bulletin. Just because these guys all luckily made it out alive, doesn't mean they made the smartest decisions in doing so. And that's a lesson worth learning from.

Evaluation of a witness-provided videotape of the emergency evacuation showed that about 152 seconds passed between the time that the first and last occupant exited the burning airplane. During this time, the crewmembers did not evacuate the airplane in an uninterrupted flow. Although the captain and cockpit jumpseat nonrevenue pilot evacuated relatively quickly, the videotape showed delays between subsequent evacuating crewmembers. During these delays, the escape ropes were available but unused, and several pieces of baggage were thrown from the airplane. The elapsed time between successive crewmembers exiting the airplane was as much as 63 seconds. During postaccident interviews, several crewmembers reported that they were offloading bags while they waited in line to exit the airplane through the cockpit exits. During subsequent documentation of the cockpit, jumpseat, and cargo compartments, investigators found no crewmember baggage. It is evident that the delays were the result of the offloading of crewmembers personal bags and not because they were waiting for other crewmembers to exit or had difficulty using the cockpit egress system.

The Safety Board concludes that most of the FedEx pilots on board the accident airplane showed poor judgment and exposed themselves to unnecessary risk when they delayed their evacuation from a burning airplane to salvage personal items. After the accident, FedEx issued a bulletin to crewmembers that stated, During an emergency evacuation each crewmember and jumpseater will evacuate in the most expeditious manner possible. No one will take an unnecessary risk by taking time to salvage personal articles.. This bulletin articulated a policy similar to the policy that passenger-carrying air carriers have expressed to passengers for years.

Skåning said:
We should be more critical of the female FO who side loaded the hell out of the gear enough to cause its collapse and subsequent run into the grass.
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The criticisms go all around (as do kudos, when appropriate). All parts of the accident, get evaluated and analyzed, as they should. The flight crew actions in relation to the actual crash itself, comes under primary/secondary factors, causal and non-causal. The discussion here is tertiary factors, or factors discovered that are non-causal. Heck, ATC rightfully got their own criticisms for delaying the ARFF response, which they deserved, as part of the tertiary findings.
 
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Hacker15e said:
From that video, about 90 seconds between when the airplane comes to a stop and ARFF starts fighting the fire.

Right on.
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Well done job. Lots of factors to help in that......location of scene, what the crew was doing at the time, and other factors. But generally for an unannounced emergency, that's indeed pretty good.

Manchester ARFF still holds the record for an unannounced emergency to beginning firefighting operations.....about 45 seconds for the 737 RTO there in 1985.
 
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TallFlyer said:
I don't know how many people were on that flight, but a FedEx MD can have 6-8 people onboard (2 crew, 2 JS on the flight deck, 2-4 JS in the aft compartment. The crew bags are usually stored in a cargo net attached to the aft bulkhead in that aft compartment, about 3-4 feet from the L1 door.

If guys are limited to egressing from the cockpit windows, there's literally not enough space for everyone to fit on the flight deck while one at a time are going down that rope.

It's not hard to imagine a few guys being stuck in the aft area, unable to fit in the flight deck, throwing out bags because there's literally nothing else they can do at the moment.

tl;dr Don't immediately jump to the conclusion that they're being cheap and stupid, because the reality could be a lot different.


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Even in that situation, if it's one exit and there are three pilots ahead of me to jump out, I wouldn't waste that time to go grab bags and presents. Are you freakin kidding me? I'd be trying to grab a PBE, donning it, fire gloves, and grabbing a fire extinguisher, anything and everything I could possibly do to survive an aircraft on FIRE.

There's not a single thing in my bag that I'd risk my life for. Everything in there is replaceable. Everything. And even if I had some sort of once-in-a-lifetime namesake / precious thing that I could lose forever, then screw it, let it go. I'm sure the loved one who passed it onto me will understand.
 
Curious, was this Fedex throwing bags out the same flight as the female FO getting retraining on an MD11 coming into land at MEM on that particular flight with a checkairman? Or was that different?
 
Hacker15e said:
From that video, about 90 seconds between when the airplane comes to a stop and ARFF starts fighting the fire.

Right on.
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granted our airplane wasn't on fire last night, but we had a medical and notified ops 40 min out, called them again 10 min out, and when we got the gate had to call again for the paramedics and waited another 10 min after blocking in for them to be there in MSP. Good thing we had a Dr on board and it wasn't actual life or death
 
ian said:
granted our airplane wasn't on fire last night, but we had a medical and notified ops 40 min out, called them again 10 min out, and when we got the gate had to call again for the paramedics and waited another 10 min after blocking in for them to be there in MSP. Good thing we had a Dr on board and it wasn't actual life or death
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That's very unusual, especially for an announced emergency. I would want to know what the delay reason was.
 
Skåning said:
We should be more critical of the female FO who side loaded the hell out of the gear enough to cause its collapse and subsequent run into the grass.
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Curios why you used the "female" qualifier? Was it to differentiate from another (male) FO who did the same thing a different time? Or just because?

jtrain609 said:
What blew?
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I believe that was the part of the wing that sits over the fuel tank.

MikeD said:
That's very unusual, especially for an announced emergency. I would want to know what the delay reason was.
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No it's not. At some airports it's pretty common to have to wait for medics to arrive, even if you've given them plenty of advanced notice. I don't know how MSP does it, but often times terminal medical (and hence, anything that happens once the plane is blocked in at the jetway) is handled by somebody other than ARFF. And some times those contractors can take a long time to get there.
 
BobDDuck said:
No it's not. At some airports it's pretty common to have to wait for medics to arrive, even if you've given them plenty of advanced notice. I don't know how MSP does it, but often times terminal medical (and hence, anything that happens once the plane is blocked in at the jetway) is handled by somebody other than ARFF. And some times those contractors can take a long time to get there.
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No, I meant "unusual" in that that's not the way it's supposed to be, especially since that's why you guys call ahead in the first place. Someone always should be waiting for you if you guys gave pre-warning. Especially if it was more than 10 mins or so warning that you give.

Each airport runs differently, depending who runs the airport....city vs an airport authority or something like that. Some airports, the ARFF dept units only handle happenings on the ramp/taxiways/runways, with a city or other dept handling terminal fire/medical. Other cities, the fire station has an ARFF side and a structural side of the station on field, with ARFF doing their thing and structural doing theirs.

Still, anytime you guys call ahead, there's little excuse for someone not to be waiting. I would want to know the reason for any delay, especially one described by Ian.
 
MikeD said:
L1 was open, but the deployed slide had been accidentally released from the floor, and was laying on the ground, making jumping out the L1 about a 15+ foot fall. R1 was unusable due to fire/smoke, so the cockpit windows were all that was available.

Risky move with that much smoke, hanging back by the L1 and taking time to locate, unsecure, and toss out Christmas presents and flight bags. Would be a lousy reason for someone to go down in the process, be unable to egress, and now ARFF has to go in after them, placing more risk on creating a rescue situation that didn't have to be one.

Then again, all kinds of screwups in that accident. Including ATC holding back/delaying ARFF trucks unnecessarily in crossing a runway to the scene. A good couple minutes delay.
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Don't they have emergency rope/chain ladders at the main exits? Or just the slide?
 
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