  A study of the six largest coronal X-ray flares in the Chandra archive is
presented. The flares were observed on II Peg, OU And, Algol, HR 1099, TZ CrB
and CC Eri, all with the High Energy Transmission Grating spectrometer (HETG)
and the ACIS detectors. We reconstruct an Emission Measure Distribution EMD(T),
using a spectral line analysis method, for flare and quiescence states
separately and compare the two. Subsequently, elemental abundaces are obtained
from the EMD. We find similar behaviour of the EMD in all flares, namely a
large high-T component appears while the low-T (kT < 2 keV) plasma is mostly
unaffected, except for a small rise in the low-T Emission Measure. In five of
the six flares we detect a First Ionization Potential (FIP) effect in the flare
abundances relative to quiescence. This may contradict previous suggestions
that flares are the cause of an inverse FIP effect in highly active coronae.
