The big news this week is video footage of American Airlines flight 1006 which caught fire at Denver airport yesterday.

American Airlines flight 1006 was a passenger flight scheduled for a two-hour flight from Colorado Springs Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth, departing Colorado Springs on time at 16:37 local time.  There were six crew and 172 passengers on board.

As the aircraft climbed away, about twenty minutes into the flight, the flight crew levelled out at FL160 (16,000 feet) and reported engine vibrations in the #2 (right-hand) engine.

They turned back and diverted to Denver, Colorado, passing Colorado Springs along the way. Denver boasts the longest public use runway in North America, at 16,000 feet.

As they approached Denver, the flight crew confirmed that they were not declaring an emergency.

ATC: American 1006, just to verify, not an emergency still, correct?
AA1006: No, we just have a high engine vibration so we are cruising slower than normal.

The aircraft landed safely at 17:15 local on Denver’s runway 16R and taxied to the apron. As they approached  Gate C38 to deplane the passengers, the right-hand engine caught fire.

Steve Schilsky took this fantastic photo of the passengers evacuating over the left wing.

Here is video footage of the fire taken from the terminal:

Twelve of the passengers were taken to hospital with minor injuries caused during the evacuation.

The thirteen-year-old aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 registered in the United States as N885NN, has two CFM56-7B engines, used exclusively by Boeing. I found this three-minute video by CFM International on the inner workings of the CFM56-7B to be quite enlightening.

Might want to turn the sound off on this one (someone has overlaid a musical score which really doesn’t add anything):

Finally, this news report shows a passenger video at the start (and a repeat of the terminal videos, with good reporting from Simple Flying):

There are unconfirmed reports of an oil or fuel leakage, which ignited somehow as they reached the stand.  A similar incident happened in 2007, when China Airlines flight 120 caught fire at the gate, after shutting down the engines. The investigation disocvered that a loose bolt had punctured the right-wing fuel tank, causing a fuel leak which then ignited when the fuel came into contact with high temperature areas on the engine after the aircraft stopped.

In that case, the investigators tested another 737-800 to determine the surface temperatures that could have ignited the fuel. These were the temperatures recorded after taxi and engine shutdown:

Exhaust plug: 90-190°C (194-374°F )
Outlet Guide Vane: 190°C-250°C (374-482°F)
Exhaust gas: 300°-340°C (572-644°F)

These temperatures would also be correct for the aircraft involved in the incident yesterday.

The Boeing 737-800 has inflatable slides at the fore and aft doors. In the video, you can see the aft slide deploying. The left-hand slide on the front of the aircraft was obstructed by the jet bridge, which presumably led to the passengers at the front of the aircraft evacuating over the wing.

Normally the flaps would be set to 40° in order to help the passengers to slide down to the ground but shutting down the engines was presumably a priority, which would have left the aircraft with no hydraulics.

Another photograph by Steve Schilsky praises the fast response of the ground crew who put out the flames using a dry chemical fire cart:

American Airlines has confirmed that the flight experienced an “engine-related issue” and a replacement aircraft flew to Denver today.