Palletto
13th Jul 2005, 15:38
One of these days…
How live can be in our job tells this little story I just experienced a few days ago….
Working for a freight company we were scheduled to have a nightflight (as usual ;-) ) from an airport located in the CIS region to the west!
When we got to the airport we took over the aircraft, getting informed that the APU is inop.! This is nothing unsusual so far, besides the fact, that it is a little uncomfortable at OATs of more than 30°C, even in the middle of the night! After getting everything set up, being happy to get home this night, we started up the a/c with external air then taxiing to the rwy.
On our way, during flight control check, we got a failure message, which could indicate an internal fault of one FCC. So I requested taxi back to parking due to technical problem, but our friend in the tower, not used to something like that, responded with a line up clearance. After trying to explain our intensions, a local guy on the freq. translated our intensions and we were finally able to go back.
Of course nobody expected us to come back and so there was no Ground Power Unit available. We let one engine running until the tech. arrived, trying to demonstrate the problem we experienced, at least this worked out…
Finally the GPU arrived and we switched of the engine, troubleshooting could start, the beginning of a funny story..
Reading out the Failure Data Summary, we found out that there was not only one faulty FCC, but the other one also had an internal failure concerning the input of the AOA vane. These readouts took about 1.5 hours, sitting in this plane, no APU, still 30°C! MEL didn´t allow to dispatch the a/c with this status, so at least one FCC had to be fully operational. The technicians decided to change the AOA vane, of which a spare part is located in one of the cargo compartments. Meanwhile our dutytime was becoming a problem too! Any further delay in repair or more problems would mean for us to go back to the hotel! Let´s hope the best, we went to the cargo comp., to get the spare part. The boxes in there, saying “keep frozen” were not even interesting any more! The spare AOA vane was there, great!!! But looking at the part description the face of our colleges turned kind of white… “This is Status X”, “wait a minute, status x?”, “that means…”, “ F..K”
Some nice fellow already changed this part some weeks before, putting the defect AOA vane back into the spare part box again, not informing anybody about this!!!
Lets call the crew tanspo…
But first we had to get the a/c to another parking position. Towing was impossible because the taxiway to the new position was not allowed for our a/c size. It turned out that we had to throw on the engines again and to taxi halfway down the active runway to make a little sightseeing of the airport.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel, telling crew contact that we were available immediately after minimum rest! In the hotel we had to write down our catering order for the next day, with a expected dep. Time (so that catering can be prepared accordingly, this has nothing to do with the pickup). Because it is easy to calculate or whatever, we just entered 12 hours later!
Gosh I slept well, when the telephone rung, the captain speaking “I just found out, that the company thinks we were already flying… let´s get ready”
We then found out, that the hotel didn´t wake us up, because of our meal order…. Well, never mind, only 2 hours to make good, if we hurry a little it shouldn´t be a problem. Arriving at the a/c, meanwhile 40°C, still no APU, the AOA vane was fixed (taken from another plane). We were good in time, almost ready to close the doors when it turned very quiet!! The GPU died!! The Technician told us it was the 8th!! since yesterday! OK, lets get another one, this took about only 30 min. After getting everything set up again, we tried to get our clearance, it was not really a surprise when atc told us, that we had to expect a 30 min delay due to government flights and temporary closure of the airport! So we had some time to drink a little bit, but there was not even a single bottle water on board, great at this temperature and with a longhaul flight ahead… At least we had some time to organize something to drink during the time of the closure!
Finally ready we requested startup (Ground Air and Crossbleed) but atc didn´t allow us on this position“ After several trials of explanation we got help again by a native groundstaff fellow. After finishing the pushback our groundstaff just told us that the “new” GPU hat a big waterspot in front of it again, so we got away just in time…
It seemed that we were finally ready to go and so the little excursion, due to several not usable taxiways and a closed runway was not even exiting!! Finally we took of and after an uneventful flight we arrived with a delay of about 18 hours at our destination. Connecting the Ground Power it was not even astonishing that it broke down….
How live can be in our job tells this little story I just experienced a few days ago….
Working for a freight company we were scheduled to have a nightflight (as usual ;-) ) from an airport located in the CIS region to the west!
When we got to the airport we took over the aircraft, getting informed that the APU is inop.! This is nothing unsusual so far, besides the fact, that it is a little uncomfortable at OATs of more than 30°C, even in the middle of the night! After getting everything set up, being happy to get home this night, we started up the a/c with external air then taxiing to the rwy.
On our way, during flight control check, we got a failure message, which could indicate an internal fault of one FCC. So I requested taxi back to parking due to technical problem, but our friend in the tower, not used to something like that, responded with a line up clearance. After trying to explain our intensions, a local guy on the freq. translated our intensions and we were finally able to go back.
Of course nobody expected us to come back and so there was no Ground Power Unit available. We let one engine running until the tech. arrived, trying to demonstrate the problem we experienced, at least this worked out…
Finally the GPU arrived and we switched of the engine, troubleshooting could start, the beginning of a funny story..
Reading out the Failure Data Summary, we found out that there was not only one faulty FCC, but the other one also had an internal failure concerning the input of the AOA vane. These readouts took about 1.5 hours, sitting in this plane, no APU, still 30°C! MEL didn´t allow to dispatch the a/c with this status, so at least one FCC had to be fully operational. The technicians decided to change the AOA vane, of which a spare part is located in one of the cargo compartments. Meanwhile our dutytime was becoming a problem too! Any further delay in repair or more problems would mean for us to go back to the hotel! Let´s hope the best, we went to the cargo comp., to get the spare part. The boxes in there, saying “keep frozen” were not even interesting any more! The spare AOA vane was there, great!!! But looking at the part description the face of our colleges turned kind of white… “This is Status X”, “wait a minute, status x?”, “that means…”, “ F..K”
Some nice fellow already changed this part some weeks before, putting the defect AOA vane back into the spare part box again, not informing anybody about this!!!
Lets call the crew tanspo…
But first we had to get the a/c to another parking position. Towing was impossible because the taxiway to the new position was not allowed for our a/c size. It turned out that we had to throw on the engines again and to taxi halfway down the active runway to make a little sightseeing of the airport.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel, telling crew contact that we were available immediately after minimum rest! In the hotel we had to write down our catering order for the next day, with a expected dep. Time (so that catering can be prepared accordingly, this has nothing to do with the pickup). Because it is easy to calculate or whatever, we just entered 12 hours later!
Gosh I slept well, when the telephone rung, the captain speaking “I just found out, that the company thinks we were already flying… let´s get ready”
We then found out, that the hotel didn´t wake us up, because of our meal order…. Well, never mind, only 2 hours to make good, if we hurry a little it shouldn´t be a problem. Arriving at the a/c, meanwhile 40°C, still no APU, the AOA vane was fixed (taken from another plane). We were good in time, almost ready to close the doors when it turned very quiet!! The GPU died!! The Technician told us it was the 8th!! since yesterday! OK, lets get another one, this took about only 30 min. After getting everything set up again, we tried to get our clearance, it was not really a surprise when atc told us, that we had to expect a 30 min delay due to government flights and temporary closure of the airport! So we had some time to drink a little bit, but there was not even a single bottle water on board, great at this temperature and with a longhaul flight ahead… At least we had some time to organize something to drink during the time of the closure!
Finally ready we requested startup (Ground Air and Crossbleed) but atc didn´t allow us on this position“ After several trials of explanation we got help again by a native groundstaff fellow. After finishing the pushback our groundstaff just told us that the “new” GPU hat a big waterspot in front of it again, so we got away just in time…
It seemed that we were finally ready to go and so the little excursion, due to several not usable taxiways and a closed runway was not even exiting!! Finally we took of and after an uneventful flight we arrived with a delay of about 18 hours at our destination. Connecting the Ground Power it was not even astonishing that it broke down….