What could you use in aviation?

[N519AT]

Supposedly, an AirTran 717 departed PHF one cloudy afternoon and had a complete electrical failure due to a burn through of a wire bundle in the fuselage. The captain removed a shoe string from his shoe, tied it around a pencil at it's balance point, hung it from the wet compass, and used it to descend through the low cloud layer until he got into VMC to land in RIC.

Would that be considered an in-flight fire?

If so, the NTSB has nothing on record about an in-flight fire on board a 717 operated by Airtran in Virginia since 1962.

I checked.

The only thing that comes up is this: http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20030409X00464&key=1