Comment by positron26
1 day ago
For skin, a few seconds might be significant. For the spars, not nearly enough time to matter. It's also not at cruise speed slamming into a downdraft or anything. This is about a 1G loading. Negligible for a while. While the fire looks cool, there's a lot of free stream mixing in and the temps won't really get that high beyond the cowling.
More likely is the hydraulics on that side burst, leading to a loss of pressure keeping the control surfaces deployed. If that lead to the leading-edge slats retracting (like they did in AA 191) you'd get a massive loss of lift on that side. The structural parts of the wing didn't have time to melt, but the fire certainly could damage all the internal control materials.