The UPS 747 crash and why it's important

Details are still slowly emerging about the UPS Boeing 747-400F crash - an airframe only three years old - that took place late on the 3rd of September, 2010, Dubai. We know the 747 took off from Dubai international, bound for Cologne, and that around 15 minutes after departure, the Boeing reported smoke in the cockpit, and the crew elected to return to Dubai. This is where the information gets a little hazy - some reports suggest the aircraft was vectored in for an approach back to its origin airport, others saying it attempted to land at a military airfield. The crew - after being too high and too fast - decided to go around, abandining their first approach. During the go around the fire suddenly got a lot worse - they could hardly see their instruments, at night, over the desert. Relying on ATC for their heading, speed and altitude the 747 impacted at high speed into an un-populated area, killing both crew members.

Was this a cargo fire that spread to the flightdeck and filled it with smoke, or a cockpit fire? Both raise worrying questions, especialy for the 747-400 - a type that has operated for over 20 years with only one previous fatal accident (SIA 006).

  Let's say it was a cargo fire, and see where that train of thought takes us. If it was indeed a cargo fire, and it turns out that there was some hazardous materials being transported, then we can draw a lot of parallels between this and the Lufthansa Cargo MD-11F crash at Riyadh not 2 months ago. Both were cargo aircraft. Both were operating flights between the Middle East and Europe. Both declared an emergency due to smoke in the cockpit, and both subsequently crashed while attempting to land. There are differences - huge ones, obviously. The aircrat type; the time of day; the fact that the MD-11 managed to make it to an airport and that it didn't break up. However, cargo operators flying to the Middle East should look very carefuly about what they have been paid to transport. An important piece of information to note is that the 747 has no fire supression on its upper deck.

                                 

The other obvious posibility is that this accident was caused by a windshield heater malfunction. A spate of recent incidents on 757s, 767 and 777s  prompted an AD (airworthiness directive) to replace the windshield heat terminal blocks. The AD also applied to 747s. The AD was finalised earlier this year, and it is possible that this flight was flying with an unchecked heat block. One 757 incident was fairly severe - an acrid smell was detected by the flight crew, who then donned their oxygen masks and put out the fire using the fire extinguisher in the cockpit but it re-ignited, severely damaging the windscreen - and a new extinguisher had to be brought in from the cabin by a flight attendant. The damage was so severe that the windscreen cracked at 500 feet on landing. If a similar scenario had occured on the UPS freighter, the crew would not have been able to extinguish the fire if it lit up a second time.

This accident is obviously extremely important, and passenger operators must take stock also. That such a predicament could befall one of the most proven and safe types in aviation history is troubling. If it was a cargo fire, why was the airline carryng very dangerous cargo? How did it catch fire? Why were the crew unable to surpress it? And if it was a cockpit fire, that could be even more worrying - it would affect every 747-400 - and quite possibly 757s, 767s and 777s - in the world. If the accident is attributed to something else, something previously unseen, that would be the most troubling outcome of all. Hopefuly the investigation can establish the cause quickly, and stop an accident like this ever happening again. Inflight fires will probably always plauge aviation, (SWR 111), but we can make them much more unlikely and, importantly, containable.

 As has been said on this page already, this is a speculative article. This page is as much about thought and opinions as it is about reporting news. More updates will be posted here as the investigation divulges information, and maybe everything written here will be proven false. However speculation is an important part of any investigation, as long as you accept the facts when they finaly do arrive.

 Whatever the outcome, I send my deepest condolences to the family of the two flight crew, and a huge respect for those men, who managed to avoid any fatalities on the ground.