Sometimes while you´re peacefully flying through the skies, something wrong happens and your peaceful flight turns up into a nightmare: oxygen masks deploy and the cabin catches on fire mid flight.
This happened this week to an OLT Espress Airbus A320, flying from Warsaw (Poland) to Hurghada (Egypt). The aircraft was normally flying at 37000 feet with 147 passengers and 8 crew on board when a slow decompression happened for some yet unknown reason. In the cockpit, among others, the SYS ON light on the overhead panel lighted up and masks where deployed all around the cabin. The flight crew immediately started an emergency descent towards Sofia (Bulgaria). But during the descent something else really bad happened. One thing that no crew wants to have on board is fire, and exactly a fire started up during the descent. So now, the crew was dealing with TWO big problems: decompression and fire.
The flight crew did an amazing job and was able to land the aircraft in only 12 minutes (mind you, they were flying over FL370!). While that, cabin crew were trying to extinguish the fire that was now flaming out from the carpet and ceiling with their fire extinguishers.
One thing about oxygen generators is that they become extremely hot when deployed. Probably they were not stowed correctly, or some mechanical failure just happened, which got the generator producing some sparks and visible flames causing the carpet to catch fire. The fire was, thanks to a great cabin crew intervention, quickly extinguished. After landing and coming to a stop in the runway, the aircraft was successfully evacuated and no injuries occurred.
Kudos to the crew, really nice job done!
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