<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by danM:
Am I the only one who's a little concerned about this? Given how fast fire can spread on an airplane (remember the Saudi plane with a fire onboard which landed safely, but then everybody on board still died with the plane on the ground because the engines weren't shut off so fire crews couldn't get near it and the crew (for whatever reason) was unable to open the exits), it seems like a huge risk to keep everybody on a plane with a fire; shouldn't they have done an emergency evacuation (which I realize has its own risks) once they landed?
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There's a big difference between smoke and fire. From reading the reports here, it would appear that there was a problem with at least one of the air conditioning packs (air cycle machines on the 777). This would also be consistent with the emergency descent, since the problem would also affect pressurization. Once the pack was shut down, however, the smoke should stop. If the crew is reasonably certain that the smoke was coming from the air conditioning system (extremely likely since it was coming out around the overhead bins), and the smoke stopped when the system was shut down, an evacuation would not be warranted.
Any confirmed or suspected case of actual fire while the airplane is on the ground will almost certainly result in an evacuation.