Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: beet1e on June 24, 2004, 02:12:34 PM
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I'm selling two TV sets and getting a 32" wide screen TV. I have an old 14" which I'm selling on Ebay - click here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5706479585&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1) if you want to buy it - only £15.
Anyhow, I brought it downstairs to test, and happened upon a movie about a B767 that got into trouble over Canada. At first I thought "yeah, yeah - same old same old disaster movie clichés"... but a quick look at IMDB showed that it was a true story. Synopsis: A balls up was made when fuelling the aircraft. The aircraft needed X kilograms of fuel for the flight, but there was a mixup on the units, and only X pounds was loaded, so the plane had less than half the fuel it should have had.
There was the usual dramatisation/fake crying etc., but it turned out to be quite a good movie. William Devane was the Captain. :aok
I can well imagine how this balls up could have occurred in Canada, which is a metric country, I believe - with distances and car odometers in kilometres, but whose southern neighbour has hardly any metrication at all.
They ended up landing at a disused field called Gimley (sp) - near Winnipeg - not enough fuel to get to Winnipeg.
It's worrying to think they could get so far into the flight before realising that they had only half the fuel they should have had. I bet this mistake would not have got past our Mr. Toad. :):)
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We will have to buy Airbuses..they are canuck proof.
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Use Google for "Gimli Glider"
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Don't these new fangled planes have fuel guages?
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Read the story.
Edit:
light 143's problems began on the ground in Montreal. A computer known as the Fuel Quantity Information System Processor manages the entire 767 fuel loading process. The FQIS controls the fuel pumps and drives all of the 767's fuel gauges. Little is left for crew and refuelers to do but hook up the hoses and dial in the desired fuel load. But the FQIS was not working properly on Flight 143. The fault was later discovered to be a poorly soldered sensor. An improbable sequence of circuit-breaking mistakes made by an Air Canada technician independently investigating the problem defeated several layers of redundancy built into the system. This left Aircraft #604 without working fuel gauges.
http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html
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For a 'made for TV' movie it is pretty good. There is a little blurb at the end that says they patched the exact same scenario into the simulators after this flight and 19 out of 20 (I forget the actual numbers) crashed the plane.
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Originally posted by Pongo
We will have to buy Airbuses..they are canuck proof.
You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!
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That crew did a marvelous job.
Every airline has different fuel loading/verification and just about every one thought theirs was "foolproof".
Then this happened and I think just about every airline "revised" their "foolproof" fuel loading/verification procedures. ;)
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!
The Air Transat flight crew now holds the world's distance record for gliding an airliner, altho they made several errors. The flight should have diverted much earlier but the Captain refused to believe his instruments. They made it to the Azores by the skin of their teeth.
I saw the movie about Flight 143. Not bad for a Canadian TV movie. Whoever the engineer was that designed the ramair turbine backup system deserves many kudos!
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From now one Im taking all my flights out of Seattle.
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Originally posted by rpm371
I saw the movie about Flight 143. Not bad for a Canadian TV movie. Whoever the engineer was that designed the ramair turbine backup system deserves many kudos!
I used to work in the plant that made those turbines (RATs) among other things. Needless to say, the engineers & union guys get a lot of job satisfaction every time their units save a few hundred lives.
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I'm a glider pilot can I pretend to a job at Air Transat ?
or do I need more qualification :D
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I was on an Air Canada flight a couple of years ago and the cabin attendent said the captian was one of their best pilots. He was the guy that landed that plane.
The old airport was being used as a drag strip and they had to land it on a very small area to avoid all sorts of things that were built in and around the strip. Very tricky landing even with engines. I think the nose gear did not lock down so the plane skidded in on its nose.
After fixing some damaged skin it was good to go again and I think they flew it out with a minimal fuel load and skeleton crew.
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!
Gliding in the dark for 30 minute while dropping from 30,000 feet and he nailed the landing like this.
(http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/images/airtransat/mdf41209.jpg)
Not bad for a Frenchmen eh Funkster.
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Originally posted by Toad
That crew did a marvelous job.
Every airline has different fuel loading/verification and just about every one thought theirs was "foolproof".
Then this happened and I think just about every airline "revised" their "foolproof" fuel loading/verification procedures. ;)
Hmmmph... I appreciate what you say, and that a fuel loading mistake might occur, but how could the pilots miss it until well into the flight?
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Because the fuel gauges were bypassed because of a botched 'fix' attempt by an Air Canada technician, so they told the flight computer how much fuel they thought they had and it used math and known consumption rates to track their supply. Of course, it was off by about 10,000lbs.
They used a technique called 'dripping' to measure their fuel manually before the flight, but they used the wrong conversion units. They used 1.7 lbs specific gravity vs. .8kilo specific gravity, or something like that.
Metric vs. olde english strikes again.
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Originally posted by Torque
Gliding in the dark for 30 minute while dropping from 30,000 feet and he nailed the landing like this.
(http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/images/airtransat/mdf41209.jpg)
Not bad for a Frenchmen eh Funkster.
Nice flying, bad systems management. Credit really goes to Airbus and Hamilton Sundstrand for making an airplane which can fly so well when air and ground crew make mistakes, and to blind luck putting them within gliding range of a field when the fire went out.
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Ditto for Boeing's 767 referenced in the title of the thread.
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Originally posted by beet1e
Hmmmph... I appreciate what you say, and that a fuel loading mistake might occur, but how could the pilots miss it until well into the flight?
IIRC...The Air Transat plane had an engine replacement done. During the replacement they used an old type bracket that was a few mm different. During flight those few mm allowed the line to rub against other parts until it seperated. This allowed a massive fuel leak that was noticed by the flight computer as a fuel load imbalance.
The copilot noticed the imbalance and after confiring with the Captain began cross feeding fuel to the other wing in an attempt to balance the weight. A flight attendant was sent to look for a visable fuel leak. Looking out the window with a flashlight, she was not able to see the fuel pumping out of the starboard engine.
The Captain was convinced it was a computer error and continued flight until fuel starvation occured.
Because of that incident, flight computers have been upgraded to show any abnormal fuel usage during flight.
The Air Canada incident occurred when the ground crew gave bad numbers to the crew. Stupid metric conversions, D'OH!
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Yeah, basically, RR made some minute spec changes to their engines, then shipped an engine without the new bracket.
The handbook solution for fuel load imbalance is to crossfeed the fuel, unless a leak is suspected.
At the time, the only reason they had to suspect a fuel leak was the fuel imbalance.
To complicate matters, the fuel leak caused high oil pressure and low oil temp readings as well. This contributed to the suspicion of the instruments not telling the truth.
Oh and they blew something like 8 of 10 tires on that "perfect" landing.
The Gimli Glider I think had a nosegear collapse after landing on an airstrip that had been converted into a racetrack. Last I heard the GG is still flying.
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The Gimli Glider story is truly awe inspiring. Great pilots, great luck, and great equipment, all flying in perfect formation.
http://www.elchineroconcepts.com/Technology%20Folder/gimli_glider.htm
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The Gimli Glider story is great. The linked stories leave out a funny part though. The team of A&Ps sent to repair the plane so that it could be flown out were stranded for a short time when their van ran out of gas. :rofl
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:rofl ...watch the CBS video clip Staga provides...listen to the Canadian reporter say "Again". LOL...that is not the Queen's English!
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Seems incredible that they could take off without fuel gauges, if I'm reading that correctly.
I turned the movie on just as they got to that cross feeding part, which solved their problem for a moment. Then the problem came back, so they varied the attitude of the aircraft by pitching up slightly, which again made the problem go away for a minute or two. That's when they realised...
A few years ago, I had to take our TB10 on a flight from Cranfield to Stapleford for some avionincs work to be carried out. I was very fortunate to meet a guy there who was headed up to Cranfield by car, as that's where my car was. So I got a lift with him. It turned out he was a CAA employee, and an interesting conversation followed about pilot training etc., and the differences between commercial airline practices of fuel management versus those of GA pilots who "tend to fly on full tanks wherever they go". He began to talk about those methods of calculating fuel requirements. And I recall thinking that the GA guys are working with a different set of parameters, such as will there be fuel at the destination, or will the base be deserted because it's lunchtime - big consideration in places like France - and carrying an extra reserve because of a greater likelihood of weather diversions for VFR flights.
A couple of months later, there was an incident report concerning a Cessna reg. G-BIRO that had crossed the channel from France back to England but had ditched on the mud flats of the Kent coast near Lydd, which was to have been their destination. There were two occupants, both of whom were commercial pilots.
Hmmm...