Aircraft pics

[ZAPPER68]

Good one Rick...thanks. To hell with the checklist, get it on the ground ASAP. We carried out a number of 'fire emergencies' in the simulator and it was always 'fly the aircraft and get it on the ground (or water in our case) as soon as possible.

A couple of years ago a colleague was flying a Bell 412EP offshore and picked up a well head tower maintenance crew. They stuffed their tools in the tailboom baggage compartment and then climbed on board for the short ride to the accommodation/production platform. When the tool bag was stuffed in the baggage compartment a battery powered drill was inadvertently turned on, catching some rags in the bag on fire.

The 'Baggage Fire' caution warning light illuminated when the smoke detector did it's job. The incident had a happy ending but the oil company was pissed that the crew chose to land on a production facility instead of the water. That particular production platform pumps +/- 200K barrels of oil a day. The 'Safety Gurus' had a field day with this one...