The Captain and crew of a Jetstar A330 sucessfully managed an in flight cockpit fire and emergency descent during a flight across the Pacific bound from Japan to the Queensland Gold coast.
Ray Banfield has described the 20 terrifying minutes when a cockpit fire threatened the lives of 199 passengers and crew on a Jetstar flight from Japan.
At 39,000 feet there was a loud bang and a brilliant white flash of flame from the base of his co-pilot’s windscreen.
“Never in all my years of flying commercial aircraft had I seen anything like it,” he told passengers upon landing safely at Guam.
“It was a dangerous situation and we had to get the aircraft down at the nearest airport. Fortunately we were just 20 minutes from Guam.”
The married father of two sons, aged 7 and 11, donned an oxygen mask, along with his co-pilot and two pilots in training, as fumes and smoke filled the cockpit. One of the trainees grabbed a fire extinguisher from the back of the cockpit and passed it to the co-pilot, who doused the flames rising from the base of the windscreen.
“The flames disappeared after about 50 seconds but there was no knowing whether it was properly out,” Capt Banfield said.
The Airbus A330-200 – the same model and vintage as the Air France jet that plunged into the Atlanic two weeks ago, killing all on board – then made a nerve-racking 20-minute descent to Guam.
It is thought the windscreen Cockpit heater cause the fire. A Safety board team will be sent to Guam to investigate the fire.
The passengers, mostly Japanese tourists heading to the Gold Coast, did not know of the emergency until they landed. Capt Banfield later said he had been unable to brief them at the time because it was impossible to speak from behind the face mask.
The crew reported that the aircraft descended normally to Guam airport, where it was met by fire trucks and sat for several minutes before being cleared to proceed to the terminal.
Passengers and crew were put up in hotels and later boarded a replacement jet sent from Sydney to take them on to Brisbane.
Jetstar managing director Bruce Buchanan said the actions of the flight crew were a credit to their professionalism and training.
The heater was an original component installed on the jet when it was built two years ago.
The Jetstar plane was last serviced by Qantas engineers in Melbourne on May 6.
“This is a quite new aircraft, well maintained and the part was factory fitted,” Mr Buchanan said.
“It is very hard to draw conclusions from that. I think we have just had a freak incident,” he said, noting that engineers at Airbus had no record of any events similar to what happened on the aircraft.