Fuel leak at altitude

[fastidious bob]

If you had a fuel leak at altitude and you were not terrain limited would you carry out the QRH NNC then descend to your drift down altitude, or initiate the descent first and then carry out the NNC when you have levelled off at your drift down altitude to make life a little easier?

[Dani]

Seems like your case would be a time critical incident, so you would descent with maximum speed, but not maximum descent, towards the next good airport. As you don't know how fast your leak is running, try to burn as much before it leaves the tanks somewhere else.

Dani

[FE Hoppy]

Follow the procedure as published.

Dani, not all procedures consider using as much fuel from the leaking tank as possible. In fact many require the closing of the cross feed to ensure engine segregation. Too many cases of crews loosing proper control of the cross feed operation.

Bring back the FE, thats what I say!

[Dani]

FE Hoppy, I would hope that you do what the QRH says, that's a no-brainer. Bob was asking about the flight strategy...

Bring back the pilots who tell the FE to be quiet :E

[john_tullamarine]

Those of us who have flown 2-crew and 3-crew with maintainer qualified F/Es .... often prefer to have the technical knowledge redundancy offered by the guy sitting in the centre seat ....