How Common is an Engine Fire?
 

I was on flight CO77 from BRS to EWR last Saturday (Boeing 737-200). At the instant we left the ground, one of the engines caught fire! The crew shut it down, and we returned and landed safely after 15 minutes with everyone's nerves intact. However, it has left me with a few questions. Can anyone here answer them for me, or direct me to some forums where I can get good answers, Thanks:
1. Just how common is an engine fire?
2. What percentage of engine fires result in fatalities?
3. Given the exact moment of the fire, did the crew do an amazing job, or what? I guess a fire two seconds before take-off would be more testing...
4. Does the 737-200 have a particular problem?
5. Is there somewhere I can look for a report to see exactly what happened on my flight.

Thanks very much, LG

you mean one like this ? ;)

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Conti...824/1503411/M/

Compressor stall?

a 737-200, really? Didn't think any major carrier still used those?

Searching the NTSB database, I can only find one fatal accident after 1980 caused by an engine fire. It was a DC-6A, on July 20, 1996, that suffered a failure of the master rod in the front bank of cylinders of the #3 engine.

If I missed any, please let me know.

CO77 is a 757-200 to the best of my knowledge. I experienced one engine fire on a TWA-transitioning-to-AA Super-80 in 2001 that required landing in MCI but it was otherwise relatively uneventful.

And to the OP - welcome to Flyertalk.

Flight was cancelled?

http://travel.flightexplorer.com/fli...=EGGD&dest=EWR

FT is as good a place as any for answers.

Was flight scheduled to operate last Saturday?

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/COA77/history

Yes -- www.fboweb.com has it listed for Saturday, but no data for the flight.

Were you told by the crew it was a fire? Or could it have been a compressor stall? Fires are very rare, compressor stalls are less rare.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressor_stall:

Compressor stalls, or compressor surges, are immediately identifiable because they produce one or more extremely loud bangs from the engine. Reports of fire or flames "shooting" out of the engine are common during this type of compressor stall. These stalls may be accompanied by an increased exhaust gas temperature, an increase in rotor speed due to the large reduction in work done by the stalled compressor and yawing of the aircraft in the direction of the affected engine due to the loss of thrust. Severe stresses occur within the engine and aircraft particularly from the intense aerodynamic buffeting within the compressor.

The engine is on fire whenever its on. Nozzles spray aerosolized jet fuel into the engine which is then lit on fire, and the exhaust shoots out the back, spinning fan blades in the process.

Since the NTSB database isn't the most powerful search engine, a lot of this comes from my personal, anecdotal, experience. I'd suggest taking a look at the database if you want to really research the subject.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp

In modern, turbine powered aircraft they are exceptionally rare. As a pilot, I'll probably never see one in my career.

Again, its anecdotal, but in the industrialized world, very, very, very few. Furthermore, the fatalities that I can think of are related to training incidents before the advent of the the advanced simulators we are blessed with today.

I'd argue that this is actually one of the failure scenarios that pilots are most prepared for because we practice it in almost every simulator session we are in. We refer to it as a "V1 Cut."

V1 is the takeoff decision speed. Before that speed, we have enough runway to stop the airplane if we decide to abort the takeoff. After that speed, we have enough speed and runway to continue accelerating and climb on the remaining engine.

In this training scenario, the instructor fails an engine right at that V1 and we for the most part take off normally, climbing at a different speed, raising the gear and flaps on a predetermined schedule, securing the failed engine, and returning to the field. Modern airliners must all demonstrate a climb with only one engine and every takeoff must be able to be accomplished from the decision speed with only one engine.

IMO, while challenging, I'd choose this failure over many others because every pilot has seen it so many times that the response is almost second nature.

I haven't heard of anything, nor could I really find anything in my cursory look at the NTSB database.

Assuming this occured in Bristol, UK, I'd watch the AAIB's website. Nothing in the March bulletin and I'm not familiar with how the AAIB decides what to publish in their bulletins, so who know's if you'll be able to read up on it.

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/bulletins.cfm

Checko

Thanks for some great replies. Yes, it was a 757-200, sorry.
So it looks like it wasn't a near death experience then. Actually, the subsequent 9 hours of disorganisation and rebooking was far more stressful.
I said fire because there were flames coming out of the back of the engine. Could have been a compressor stall though. There was repeated loud banging - I thought it was a part rattling around the inside of the engine cowling. The plane never seemed to fly less than perfectly though.
I'm getting a bit fed up with the reliability of my flights though. I'm averaging a one day delay every four flights so far this year.
Thanks
:)

www.avherald.com

A Continental Airlines Boeing 757-200, registration N13113 performing flight CO-77 from Bristol,EN (UK) to Newark,NJ (USA) with 156 passengers, diverted to Birmingham,EN (UK) after the crew reported problems with the right hand engine (RB211) a few minutes after takeoff. The airplane landed safely in Birmingham 25 minutes after takeoff.

The flight was cancelled, the passengers were brought to hotels and departed to the US the following day.

---

It's listed as an incident, so that's relatively bad from a pax perspective, but it's not an accident or a crash, which are worse. Doesn't list engine fire, which if you search, several others do. Engine fire is not common, but there have been a handful thus far this year.

I'm unsure if this counts techinically as an "engine fire" or something else but a lot of people lost their lives...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_Air_Disaster

In this case it wasn't the engine problem that caused the disaster but rather the flight crew's failure to identify which engine had failed.