On board fire?

Eagle

New Member
Ananova:

Air ambulance crew mistake fire smell for farts

A Norwegian air ambulance crew almost ignored the smell of an on board fire because they thought it was just the patients farting.

They noticed a cabbage-like smell which turned out to be a blaze near the front window of the aircraft.

An investigation has traced the smell to burning wire insulation.

"Everyone who has flown knows that gases arise that need to slip out. It isn't unusual that this happens to our patients," said ambulance chief Geir-Arne Soerensen of Air Transport, the company responsible for the flight.

The flames flared up three times, despite attempts to extinguish them and smoke soon started to fill the cabin, according to Aftenposten.

The co-pilot managed to bring the plane down, where an emergency evacuation took place.
 
ok.
This is all pretty funny but serves as a segue to something I was going to post.

Today, halfway through a Discovery Flight I was giving, I smelled what I belived to be electrical-type smoke. I didnt instantly panic, just went through a scan of the obvious (breakers, ammeter, engine temps, etc..). All ok. Pretty much as soon as I looked everything over, the smell was gone. The back seat pax also noticed it.

Anyways, what I am kinda wondering is what kind of scenario, if ANY, might result in a momentary smell of smoke.

One last note: this was in a C-172. When i checked the oil, I was careful not to drip, but it was already hot and may have dripped oil. If I did though it woulda only been like one or two drops, and I still believe that what I smelled was electrical.

DeanR
 
I don't think you can smell dripped oil from the cockpit (unless you have a really keen sense of smell, or maybe the heat on- but with 100 deg temps, I doubt that was the case
wink.gif
). I once had a student "drip" a fair share of oil after missing the filler tube putting oil in a 172. I cleaned up what I could, but there was still quite a bit that got blown out of the cowling along the sides of the aircraft and we never smelled anything.

Not sure what could cause a momentary smell like that though...without popping a breaker or showing up on the ammeter.
 
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