FAA Assists Coast Guard Colleagues with Fire Investigation
This case is another example of the FAA’s long-standing cooperative relationship with all branches of the U.S. military.
By Jim Tise, FAA Office of Communications
Engineers at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center are the world’s leading researchers into aviation fire safety. Their work is confined mostly to the extensive laboratories at the center’s Atlantic City, N.J. headquarters, so when they get a chance to put their knowledge to use in a real-world scenario, they jump at the chance.
One such opportunity came in early September when the U.S. Coast Guard approached the FAA’s Fire Safety Branch to help in the investigation of a fire that damaged one of its MH-65 helicopters.
The helicopter had been deployed to Louisiana to assist in the Coast Guard’s hurricane response effort. As it was preparing to take off on its third flight of the day, it was discovered that a fire erupted in one of the engine compartments. The Coast Guard operates 87 H-65 variants on its many missions; besides responding to disasters, they include operating search and rescue flights, aiding law enforcement, and providing environmental and marine protection. Although the fire did not ground its fleet, the service wanted to find out quickly what the issue was to ensure safety.
“[The Coast Guard] started their investigation and asked the FAA to assist with determining the thermal properties or fire retardant properties of materials in the engine compartment,” said Aeon Brown, a general engineer in the FAA’s Systems Fire Protection Branch at the Tech Center. “They wanted our expertise in analyzing the materials they thought were the culprits in the mishap.”
“We have a fairly limited amount of resources when it comes to the laboratories and specific testing capabilities,” said Lt. Cmdr. Russell Merrick , who served on the panel investigating the fire. However, in early 2020, the FAA Technical Center cut the ribbon on their new one-of-a-kind fire research facility. “We wouldn’t have been able to conduct those tests on our own. At that point the FAA became instrumental in the investigation,” Merrick added.
Due to COVID-19, the FAA and Coast Guard arranged virtual meetings with the FAA’s subject matter experts to define the scope of what they could accomplish and what could be learned from FAA testing. The Tech Center’s proximity to the Coast Guard’s Atlantic City station allowed FAA researchers to gain access to an MH-65 helicopter to see where the materials in question were installed.
“We decided on the best way to approach it,” said Brown. “We’re not going to tell them what to do. We’ll present them the information they need to make the best decision,” he added.
FAA researchers ran three separate tests on several materials supplied by the Coast Guard using specialized equipment not readily available elsewhere. “All these tests are exposing the materials to an extreme temperature to see how they are going to behave,” explained Brown. Results from those tests were then compared to how the materials were supposed to perform according to the manufacturer’s specifications.
For instance, data from Cone Calorimeter testing was gathered and analyzed for heat release and flammable properties, explained Sean Crowley, a fire analytic instrument engineer technician at the Tech Center.
The FAA’s patented microscale combustion calorimeter (MCC) is a test that quantifies the potential fire hazard of a material using only several milligrams of sample per test. The MCC has been used for several “real-life” fire investigations and is used as a forensics tool for composition, underwriting, and consumer product counterfeiting.
Although the investigation into the fire continues, the Coast Guard feels confident it has honed in on its cause thanks in part to the help provided by the FAA’s Technical Center. “We have a very good understanding of the events that occurred and how that timeline progressed,” explained Merrick.
As a result, the Coast Guard has issued a safety message — similar to an FAA advisory circular — to MH-65 crew and mechanics outlining concerns that they need to understand based on findings from the investigation. “We’re also going to incorporate that information into a change of the flight manual for the aircraft,” said Merrick.
The Coast Guard “would not have been able to do that as comprehensively without the support of the FAA, both in terms of expertise and accelerated time line,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Christian Polyak. “They saw the importance of the quick turnaround and were able to get it to us, which is something we’re not used to,” he admitted.
“I enjoy working on “real-life” investigations of material fire performance,” said said Richard Walters, a research chemist with the FAA’s Fire Safety Branch, who participated in the investigation. “I have done other forensic studies using the MCC, but normally I just test samples and do comparative performance studies for reports. Trying to solve a problem using science after an incident is a different type of challenge. In this case I was able to run the FAA MCC on the samples and have an answer within hours. Coworkers tested the same materials using the larger-scale fire tests and compared the results. All the test methods agreed and the suspect component identified. It is nice to see a ‘real-life’ application and the impact that our work has in transportation and beyond,” he added.
Brown, as a relatively new member of the FAA’s Fire Safety Branch, said “just being a part of a team that furthers the FAA’s safety initiative was definitely a great experience for me — just to see how we are actually directly impacting and improving aviation safety.”
