Today, a Ryanair Boeing 737 was met by the fire service in Dublin following a fire indication upon arrival. The aircraft came to a stop on the runway, with the pilot announcing a Mayday emergency to air traffic controllers.
While Ryanair has been operating a minimal service out of Dublin and London recently, it has kept the two cities connected with a daily rotation of its Boeing 737 aircraft. Meanwhile, some of the airline’s other aircraft have been operating “ghost flights” to nowhere to keep both the aircraft and its crew current.
Fire indication in Dublin
Today the Ryanair rotation between London Stansted Airport and Dublin was operated by EI-DWD, a 13-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft. According to data from RadarBox.com, the aircraft departed London Stansted Airport (STN) at 10:18, two minutes ahead of schedule. The aircraft appears to have undertaken a reasonably uneventful flight to Ireland, lasting just over one hour.
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However, upon landing on Runway 28L at Dublin (DUB), the aircraft received a fire indication. According to records from LiveATC.net, the pilot reported the incident to Air Traffic Control saying,
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Ryanair Eight Bravo. Wheel well fire indication request fire service. Just stopped on the runway.”
The pilot then went on to ask the tower controller if he could see anything from the wheel well, to which the tower controller responded,
“Negative, there was some smoke just when you were slowing down at the very end but there’s nothing now.”
The controller went on to notify the pilot that crew were en route to the aircraft, to which the pilot responded,
“Okay, as quick as possible, because we do have the indication of a fire and we might have to evacuate if we don’t get any notification almost immediately”
No heat transfer observed
Around one minute after the aircraft reported the mayday incident, the pilot added, “I think we’ve had the indication for a while. We are going to evacuate.” Around a minute after this, the pilot added, “The engines are still running. We haven’t started evacuating yet. If they could get close and have a really quick look to see if there’s any indication of a fire.”
The landing gear was inspected by the fire service with a thermal imaging camera, with the crew stating, “we’re not getting any heat transfer”. Around nine minutes after announcing the incident, the aircraft shut down its engines to allow the fire crew to get closer to inspect the wheel well. In the end, the aircraft was not evacuated.
Once the fire crew and pilots were satisfied that no further danger was present, the aircraft was towed off the runway to avoid restarting the engines. In August the AAIB ruled a Lauda A320 had been unnecessarily evacuated following a rejected take-off at London Stansted Airport.
Simple Flying has contacted Ryanair for comment. This story will be updated as appropriate with any such comment.
What do you make of this morning’s incident? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
