Pacific Coast Airlines clears up what happened to Flight 457 Tuesday at the Trail Regional Airport
By Bruce Fuhr
Passengers on Pacific Coast Airlines Flight 457 bound for Trail Tuesday afternoon were not in any great danger when a fire is thought to have started in one of the engines said Vice President of Commercial Services Spencer Smith Wednesday.
“First of all there needs to be a bit of clarity around what actually took place,” Smith told The Nelson Daily.
“There’s been different reports and varying reports . . .. The notion that the plane caught fire and the engine was engulfed in flames. I also have had reports that the engine was on fire in flight.”
“None of that is true,” Smith confirmed.
Nelson resident Doug Stoddart was on Flight 457 and noticed flames coming out of what he thought was the engine.
“When I looked back I could see the flames coming out of the engine,” Stoddart, on the flight with his wife Sharon, said.
“The pilot didn’t know about it because I had to tell him the engine is on flames,” Stoddart added. “Then he looked back and everybody quickly exited the plane.”
Smith said Flight 457 landed at the Trail Regional Airport with no issues and taxied to the runway outside the arrival lounge to allow passengers to leave the plane.
The crew shutdown the both engines and passengers were disembarking when flames were seen coming out of the exhaust on the right-hand side of the plane.
“It wasn’t a situation where the engine was engulfed on flames, what effectively happened during the shutdown procedure there was a build-up of fuel that ignited after the engine was shutdown and flames shot out the exhaust pipe,” Smith explained.
Smith said the flight crew never had any indication there was a fire.
Multiple fire warning systems within the engine compartment in different spots never displayed indications from the flight crew prospective.
“A passenger on the flight in the cabin that saw the flame come out declared fire and then captain at that point didn’t waste anytime to evaluate the situation and deployed the fire suppression immediately,” Smith said.
“It’s kind of like a big fire extinguisher within the engine that deploys Halon,” Smith added.
“That’s what people saw rising up on the other side of the plane, Halon, and not smoke.”
Halon is a liquefied, compressed gas that stops the spread of fire by chemically disrupting combustion.
Flight 457 was en route from Vancouver to Trail with 30 passengers and three crewmembers on board — two pilots and one flight attendant.
No one was injured.
As per protocol the Transportation Safety Board has been contacted.
Smith said the Saab 340A remained at the Trail Regional Airport overnight.
Pacific Coast Airlines was hoping to have a maintenance crew arrive Wednesday morning to check over the plane.
However, at the time of the interview Smith was unsure of the morning flight landed at Trail Regional Airport due to weather conditions.
When the crew does arrive the members will thoroughly assess the plane before flying the Saab 340A back to Pacific Coast Airlines hangar in Vancouver.
If damage is deemed to be too great, Pacific Coast Airlines would need to transport the necessary parts, workers and equipment to fix the plane for transportion back to home base.
Smith said Pacific Coast Airlines has experienced only one other problem of this kind.
On December 18, 2011, in Williams Lake, flames once again were seen shooting out the exhaust, this time during start up.
The on-board crewmember witnessing the flames decided to quickly shutdown operations until it was safe to proceed.
See earlier story:
Comments