British Airways B744 over Atlantic on Oct 14th 2013, electrical fire on board

Last Update: April 10, 2014 / 16:19:48 GMT/Zulu time

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Photo of British Airways G-BNLW, Boeing 747-400 — British Airways G-BNLW, Boeing 747-400 (Photo credit: JamesZ_Flickr / Flickr / License: CC by)

Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 14, 2013

Classification
Incident

Airline
British Airways

Flight number
BA-192

Departure
Dallas Ft. Worth, United States

Destination
London Heathrow, United Kingdom

Aircraft Registration
G-BNLW

Aircraft Type
Boeing 747-400

ICAO Type Designator
B744

A British Airways Boeing 747-400, registration G-BNLW performing flight BA-192 (Dep Oct 13th) from Dallas Ft. Worth,TX (USA) to London Heathrow,EN (UK) with 275 passengers, was enroute over the Atlantic Ocean, breakfast was about to be served, when an burning electrical smell was noticed and fire detectors went off. An actual fire was detected in the cabinet containing the control center of the inflight entertaiment center, cabin crew managed to extinguish the fire. The aircraft continued to London for a safe landing.

The airline confirmed the incident reporting it took about 5 minutes from detecting the first fumes to the ultimately small fire being extinguished using several, possibly 5, fire extinguishers.

The occurrence has been rated as serious incident, an investigation has been opened into the occurrence.

Passengers reported that they noticed the inflight entertainment system went offline and there was some accumulation of flight attendants. It was only later that some of the passengers were quietly told about a fire, that had taken out part of the inflight entertainment system.

On Apr 10th 2014 the British AAIB released a preliminary report within their monthly bulletin reporting that the aircraft was enroute about 2 hours before landing when both pilots noticed a smell reminding them of desinfectant, they checked the cockpit door surveillance system to find out whether the forward lavatory was being cleaned. The upper deck forward flight attendant called the flight deck reporting a "funny smell", during the call the pilots noticed the smell turned into a strong, acrid electrical burning smell. The call was termined when a lavatory smoke EICAS message was received indicating the smoke was either in a lavatory or the cooling duct of the inflight entertainment system. The captain handed control to the first officer and worked the related checklist which did not require any action from the flight deck, the crew decided not to don their oxygen masks and did not transmit a distress call.

In the meantime two flight attendants had located an open fire in galley 4 between doors 2L and 2R and began to fight the fire with BCF extinguishers reporting to the flight deck open flames in galley 4 emanating from the Video Demodulator (VMOD) of the inflight entertainment system, which was located in the service director's office in Galley 4. The communication channels were kept open. The fire appeared to keep relighting several times, a total of five fire extinguishers were discharged until the fire could be reported out. The VMOD was removed and secured.

The AAIB analysed: "The VMOD unit was sent to its manufacturer for investigation but, at the time of preparation of this account, their report has not been received. However it was noted that the unit is certified to self-extinguish when electrically isolated. An internal investigation by the operator concluded that it was likely the VMOD had remained powered during the incident and this was the reason it continued to re-ignite. One of the cabin crew described how he believed he had isolated the IFE, but his description of events suggested that he had only actioned the â€˜seat/pc electrics isolationâ€™ part of the â€˜Safety Equipment and Procedures Manualâ€™ and that this had been done from memory."