A319 Generator MEL requirements

[Pinkman]

Many of you know from the BA38 discussion several years back that i'm a fuels guy not an aircraft engineer so I thought I'd post a rare question to someone who might know, based on an experience I had on a BA flight to Hamburg (BA 962) last Thursday morning (21st Nov). So we're sitting at LHR T5 and late, and the APU went tech. OK, no problem there, it happens. So we get a ground start to get one engine going and some packs on because it is stifling. Ground power disconnected and the cabin goes into disco mode... every single cabin light flashes off and on at about one second intervals and all out of phase with each other. Being fluorescents, I'm guessing that the voltage on the bus was too low. I mean this is serious epileptic fit type flashing and actually quite painful to the eyes, and went on for nearly ten minutes during which several announcement made by the cabin crew that it was nothing to worry about. Then a flight deck announcement apologizing and saying "it will be OK when we get the second engine up and running". And sure enough after the second spooled up, it was fine and we departed.

My question is, can a single engine on the A3xx not supply supply sufficient electrical power with the APU u/s? I was surprised to see that it could not.

Can anyone enlighten me?

[flyboyike]

The answer to your question is yes, it can. Something else was jacked up on that particular airplane.

[A4]

There's been some historical cases of this. IIRC it's something to do with the Generator Contactor being faulty. If my memory serves me correctly there was an instance of this in the cruise and the multiple contacts caused the rudder trim to progressively wind in more trim with each contact event.

Perhaps someone here can recall in more detail than me?


Here's the event.

From Skybrary: http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/1686.pdf

[Pinkman]

Thanks all. I guess the obvious question is, then, and in no way getting melodramatic, would you take off in a twin with one generator performing below par and no APU? Is it a MEL item? Or a judgement call?