Safety Topics: Cabin Water Spray

This article describes a series of full scale fire tests to evaluate and develop an on‐board cabin water spray system for use in post‐crash fires. The baseline system used for the study was the ‘SAVE’ system designed in the UK and and consisting of a large number of small nozzles, mounted through the aircraft ceiling, which discharge a fine water‐mist spray for a period of 3 minutes. The FAA test programme comprised two phases: (1) looking at effectiveness, potential benefits and the adverse effects of accidental discharge; and (2) addressing the optimisation of the system and the development of requirements and specifications.