Black Smoke at YSSY today

[Adam T]

Hi Everyone,

I flew back in from Cairns on DJ386 this afternoon and as I was driving along General Holmes Dr about to turn onto Southern Cross Dr when I noticed a plume of black smoke rising into the sky near the 3rd runway (close to the fire station/tower mound).

I've not seen anything in the news about any sort of accident, I'm assuming this may have been a training excercise for the fireys? This was around 2:30pm today.

Can anybody confirm?

[Nigel C]

Yep, it'd be a regular training exercise. The crew on today would be on their first day shift back I think (I'm pretty sure they follow the same roster pattern as me).

[Sarah C]

As Nigel said, it is a regular training exercise. It would happen on average every fortnight, the size of the smoke varies. Some of them can be pretty high and very thick - I often wonder what the reaction would be from passengers on departing or arriving flights!

[Bernie P]

Originally Posted by Nigel C

Yep, it'd be a regular training exercise. The crew on today would be on their first day shift back I think (I'm pretty sure they follow the same roster pattern as me).

How does this affect arrivals/departures on 16L/34R when they do the training exercise, (smoke drifting across the flight path) is it done in a relatively 'quiet' time when it is not in use for a little bit? Especially now that 25/7 is out of action???

[Stephen Brown]

Mods, can we sticky this at the top of the forum because it seems to be asked every few weeks, and it seems the search function must be broken.

[lloyd fox]

No Stephen the search function is just hidden in the Smoke!!

[Nigel C]

BOOM TISH!!!



I think it happens more often than every fortnight. The guys on my shift rotation seem to do it pretty much every week. I can only imagine the other 3 crews are much the same.

Tower does notify aircraft that it's a training exercise. I don't know what happens inside the cabin as to whether the passengers are informed.

I think they try to coordinate it for when there aren't going to be aircraft flying through the thick of it.

[Tom Lohdan]

Nigel,

Do they ever do the fire Training during bad weather or airport closures?

Was recently at JFK, caught this photo of fire training while the airport was closed.

Lucky to get the 3rd flight out, heavy lightning and thunder, but they were out there.

[Nigel C]

The airport almost never closes, so no for that one, and I think they'd use the same common sense as everyone else and stay indoors during inclement weather.

[Adam P.]

Does that mean that if there was an accident in bad weather they'd stay inside?