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This paper outlines a program that could ultimately lead to design standards for an onboard aircraft cabin water spray system to suppress postcrash fires. A brief summary of the program and the status of current activities is presented. The latter includes full-scale effectiveness tests, a study of possible problems arising from the inadvertent (or intentional) discharge of the system, and computation of the potential benefits (lives saved) from the mandatory requirement of such a system. The bulk of the paper describes the results of full-scale tests under several postcrash fire scenarios to measure the increased survival rate when using a water spray system. It is shown that a water spray system may provide passengers 2 to 3 minutes of additional time to escape under certain postcrash fire scenarios.

Materials are available for preventing or retarding aircraft cabin fires involving urethane foam seat cushions. Realistic fire tests performed in a wide-body test article demonstrate that some in-flight and ramp fires can be prevented, and that the allowable time for safe evacuation can be significantly extended during a survivable postcrash fuel fire, when the urethane foam seat cushion is covered by a “blocking layer” material.