- Author
-
Blake, D.
- Title
- Effectivenss of Flight Attendants Attempting to Extinguish Fires in an Accessible Cargo Compartment.
- Coporate
- Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ
- Sponsor
- Department of Transportation, Washington, DC
- Report
-
DOT/FAA/AR-TN99/29
April 1999
14 p.
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM: Federal Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center's Fire Safety Section's Full-Text technical reports page (in Adobe Acrobat portable document format [PDF]): http//www.fire.tc.faa.gov/reports/report.stm AVAILABLE FROM National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900. Website: http://www.ntis.gov
- Keywords
-
cargo space
|
extinguishment
|
effectiveness
|
fire extinguishers
|
aircraft compartments
|
fire tests
|
breathing apparatus
- Identifiers
- flight attendant; class B cargo compartment; hand held fire extinguisher
- Abstract
- This technical note documents the results of a project to evaluate the ability of flight attendants to extinguish cargo fires in small Class B cargo compartments. Thirteen fire tests were conducted in a modified Shorts 330 airplane in which flight attendants attempted to extinguish cargo fires. Some of the selected test variables included the cargo compartment size, the width of the access door, the size and type of ftre extinguishers available, the presence and absence of an unobstructed center aisle in the cargo compartment, the type of Protective Breathing Equipment (PBE), and the delay between the smoke detector alarm and the star of the firefighting efforts. The results of the testing indicated that in most cases the flight attendants were unable to successfully extinguish these fires.