At the airport you can see the jumbo jets lined up nose to tail waiting to take off. If one of these jets burst into flame (say the mechanic forgot to put duct tape over the self destruct switch), could the fire spread to another plane. Then the fire from that plane spread to the next plane, and so and and so on.
I would think that the other planes would just move out of the way once the flames started getting close.
Unlikely. Lined up for takeoff, they are further apart than they look.
The ones behind the plane that caught fire probably wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, however.
After a bit of research here’s some more detail. There seem to be no specific rules for the following distance to be maintained by aircraft on a taxiway, other than ‘adequate’. The key factor appears to be to avoid effects of jet blast from the aircraft ahead, so apparently the general rule of thumb to maintain a separation roughly equal to the length of aircraft ahead. For a jumbo this would mean at least a couple of hundred feet, most likely outside the range of ignition from a plane fully engulfed in fire.
When things get crowded we often get pretty close behind the guy ahead. Close enough that we’re screwed if he explodes or burns aggressively.
We only get that close when we’re in stop and go traffic. If everyone is moving towards the runway continuously we leave plenty of space ahead; it sucks to have to stomp the brakes & throw flight attendants all over the place. Absent brake lights it’d be easy for the guy ahead to slow or stop without that change being immediately obvious to the following aircraft.
Having said that we sometimes follow closely, there are a lot of interconnected taxiways on most airports. So while the jet right behind the burning jet might be trapped, the jet 2, 3, or at most 4 airplanes back could turn off onto the cross taxiway that happened to be adjacent to him & thereby escape. As could everybody else farther back. So at worst we’re gonna lose 3 or 4 jets.
A big jet can pirouette, essentially rotating about the main gear. A typical taxiway is not wide enough to make a 180; the nose gear will end up in the grass alongside the taxiway after just 30 to 40 degrees of turn. But somebody who’s main gear is sitting abeam or slightly past a 90 degree taxiway can readily pivot onto it and escape.
With enough motivation a guy who had just passed a taxiway could back up a plane length or so to then turn off and escape. Once he was sure the jets behind him had already gotten out of the way.
The actual risk of sudden explosion or conflagration while taxiing are so close to zero as to be ignorable.
A legit concern we have every day is sitting waiting first or second in line to take off while other jets are landing on the same runway. If for whatever reason the arriving jet got off track & was heading towards us sitting there there’d be damn near nothing we could do to avoid getting whacked. With disastrous consequences for all. There’s neither time nor space to get to where he won’t be in the next few seconds.
Something else to think about.
To the op question, not likely. Jet fuel doesn’t burn when exposed to direct flame.
LSLGuy has it covered, but I’ll give a slightly different scenario from small prop planes. Once I was in line for takeoff and oil started flecking onto my windshield. I pulled out of line and shut down, assuming it was from my engine. Turned out it was from the plane in front of me, which had developed a large leak from its prop hub. The prop wash blew it back onto my aircraft.
Again, not much chance of a fire starting. But that scenario probably raised the odds from zero to 1 in a million.