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Spirit's DTW hangar Foam Fiasco
Earlier today, Spirit airlines kicked off its 4th of July with a foam celebration. The unfortunate festivities started when the fire suppression system was inadvertently set off at the airlines maintenance hangar at Detroit metro airport. With the hangar doors being open, the foam also flowed onto the hangars ramp. The system was most likely set off by the lightning storm that passed over Metro airport around 5PM local time. (www.youtube.com) More...
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I have seen this happen in the hangars of a large MRO in Central NC, a few times....
These systems seem to cause much more problems than they ever prevent. A simple auto-call to the responding authority would quickly determine if equipment was needed or not.
I don't think you really understand how these systems work. It doesn't detect a fire and send something to the fire dept. It detects a fire and sets the foam off. Most systems (like the hangar I work in) have a timer where you can hold a button and abort the discharge if it was something accidental. In this case it really doesn't matter since it was most likely lightning shorting out the system. Saying that the fire department should have been able to stop it is like me calling the electricity company and telling them they shouldn't have shorted out my computer when lightning stuck my house.
I know exactly how the system works, Mike. I’m saying that the foam should not be auto triggered with the sensor activation even with a delay. It should just send the alarm and a human would activate the foam if necessary. That way a lightning strike or whatever else would simply trigger the alarm and via video feed or human on site the foam would be activated if needed. Unnecessary foaming of multi-million dollar aircraft would be prevented or at least greatly reduced.
I really don't think you do. The lightning didn't hit a sensor. It hit the part of the system that activates the foam. Even if something just sends a signal to a person who the sends a signal back to activate the foam. This would have still happened as the part that activates the foam is what caused it to go off, not the sensing portion of the system.
OK, plain and simple. Lightning cannot turn a valve. The fact that it could be auto-activated in any way is the problem.
