hot wheels vs brake fire

[gulfairs]

Back in 1985, in a 747-219 I was faced with an abort at V! -10 due to a CADC failure.
I aborted . and stopped on the runway.

The Flight engineer commented that although the brakes were hot and I would need some 25 to 30 minutes air cooling, i had enough energy to backtrack and commence an immediate take off.
I raised the question:"What do I do withe undercarriage if we have an engine failure during the next attempt?".
The answer was: "Retract the gear of course."
I elected to return to the ramp and take a 2 hour delay to cool the brakes.
For this decision I was severely caned. With notes against my record,endorsed because the flight engineer had advised me that it was safe But the chances of a secondary failure were low and so on
The disciplinary actions were so severe that I had little choice except to resign which is what I did. There were other mitigating circumstances that were not significant at the time so I ended a career with the antipodean airline at the ripe age of 50.
Which now I don't regret, but at the time it was a bitter pill to swallow.
The aircraft run late for two sectors and was back on time after a 2 and a bit hour turn around in ASSY.
My all time moto . If you are late slow down and take your time. A rush usually ends up in tears or in flames.

[Fullblast]

Nowadays would have been different.

[Tee Emm]

The Flight engineer commented that although the brakes were hot and I would need some 25 to 30 minutes air cooling, i had enough energy to backtrack and commence an immediate take off. Based upon your report I sympathise with you. Your decision was entirely within the realms of sound airmanship and the flight engineer was wrong in his suggested course of action.
To deliberately return to the beginning of the runway for an immediate take off when the brakes must have been extremely hot after a V1 minus 10 abort, would have been folly. The back-track taxi distance alone plus the distance of the following take off run would have further raised the temperature of the brakes and tyres to unknown temperatures. Then to deliberately get airborne simply to cool the brakes and tyres in order to maintain a schedule, smacks of poor judgement by the engineer. There is more to good airmanship and sound command judgement than reading theoretical numbers from a book. It might be legal by the book but a decision to conduct an immediate take off, given the stated circumstances, would certainly not have been safe.


With notes against my record, endorsed because the flight engineer had advised me that it was safe As you say, there were other factors that came into play but for the airline management to pin you because a FE said it was "safe" to take off again, smacks of personal animosity towards you. A good lawyer would soon destroy that airline management technical decision to castigate you for a command decision based upon your considerable experience as a captain. Flight engineers are quite entitled to give an opinion on what is safe and not safe but the law says the captain has sole responsibility for the safe conduct of the flight.

[TyroPicard]

With 25 to 30 minutes of air cooling.. presumably means LG down... would you have enough fuel for the sector?

[Intruder]

Did you ever go to the Performance manual and verify or refute the engineer's statement? I can't imagine why you would not...

[latetonite]

Well, in 2001 I had a " hot brake" indication past V1 on an A300, I decided to leave the gear down.

Got a wheel fire afterwards as reported by airplanes and the tower, made a circuit, and landed.

Glad I did it that way. Bogie and 4 wheels replacement was the only consequence.

[No Fly Zone]

I'm sorry to hear this tale, Capt. I must believe that you FE was a fool, an UNSAFE fool. I must agree with other responders that this would not likely happen today, at least I hope not and, in any case, the Captain is always responsible... Two hour schedule penalty or not, I'm certain that you made the appropriate (safe) choice.

[Centaurus]

Did you ever go to the Performance manual and verify or refute the engineer's statement? I can't imagine why you would not...

Whether the FE's Performance Manual calculations was correct or not doesn't really matter in this case. The captain weighed up the facts of the incident and exercised his judgement to be on the safe side. If his company management elected to hang him out to dry then their agenda needs to be examined. A half decent lawyer could have provided a legal argument that the captain's decision not to take the advice of the flight engineer was perfectly acceptable and on the face of things, the safest option.

It was considered by the prosecution team that it was unlikely a double jeopardy event would occur such as an engine failing on take off following the hot brakes departure, requiring the landing gear to be retracted to maintain a safe climb gradient. In other words they felt it could be ignored in terms of risk assessment.

The problem with that theory is if a take off is made with known hot tyres and brakes there is a better than even chance that one or more tyres may be damaged by the excessive heat. If we accept that possibility - and a wise pilot should - consideration of the danger posed by debris from a deflated hot tyre tyre that may impact flaps or be ingested, needs to be taken into account.

[Intruder]

Whether the FE's Performance Manual calculations was correct or not doesn't really matter in this case.
Actually, it does.

The Captain should use ALL available information to form his decision. Using the Performance Manual was one of the 'no-brainers' in this case.

A half decent lawyer could have provided a legal argument that the captain's decision not to take the advice of the flight engineer was perfectly acceptable and on the face of things, the safest option.

The Performance Manual would likely back up the Captain in this case (I can't imagine any V1-10 post-reject brake cooling schedule on a 747 calling for less than 70 minutes). Again, using the manual would likely have helped him.

[JammedStab]

747-219 = Air NZ?

Wouldn't have thought that they would behave like this.

[parabellum]

If we accept that possibility - and a wise pilot should - consideration of the danger posed by debris from a deflated hot tyre tyre that may impact flaps or be ingested, needs to be taken into account.


Additionally, if a tyre deflates , the crew are hardly likely to know, so when they retract the gear there is a possibility that a damaged tyre will jam the gear up. Not quite the disaster on an aircraft with two, not four, main u/c legs, but there is the possibility of major damage on landing.

[Wageslave]

A good lawyer would soon destroy that airline management technical decision to castigate you for a command decision based upon your considerable experience as a captain.

Dunno about that. An airline has remarkable and unusual powers to ditch pilots. They maintain they need full and complete trust in your Professional judgement which is a much higher criterion than, say, a shopworker's ability to work a till and if they claim they've "lost faith in your ability to operate" it will be very very difficult to overcome that objection claiming unfair dismissal, because if the airline does take that stance it may well not be deemed unfair.

[con-pilot]

To deliberately return to the beginning of the runway for an immediate take off when the brakes must have been extremely hot after a V1 minus 10 abort, would have been folly. The back-track taxi distance alone plus the distance of the following take off run would have further raised the temperature of the brakes and tyres to unknown temperatures. Then to deliberately get airborne simply to cool the brakes and tyres in order to maintain a schedule, smacks of poor judgement by the engineer. There is more to good airmanship and sound command judgement than reading theoretical numbers from a book. It might be legal by the book but a decision to conduct an immediate take off, given the stated circumstances, would certainly not have been safe.



What he said.

Besides that, if you had follwed the FE's advise and it had all gone south, who would have been held responsible, you the captain or the FE?

No need to answer that question, as we all know.

[Green Guard]

we should never play with hot brakes

Swissair Flight 306 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_306)

[BARKINGMAD]

Typical apalling "management" skills shown by flight ops bosses.

As recently as 2009 I was criticised for using an Infra-red non-contact thermometer to assess the brake temps on B737-700 series aircraft. The device, bought with my own after-tax money, would read up to 230 degrees Celsius, and proved that one of the brake units was not earning its keep.

The engineering dept of this (now-defunct) British CAA supervised operator grumped to me that a new brake unit would cost £30k, and the CEO would not be amused. Techlog entries were signed off as NFF (and we all know what that stands for?!) and the frame continued in service for a further 2 years in this condition.

To cap it all, the message went out that l was using a LASER THERMOMETER (horror of horrors!) and therefore l was a very naughty boy!

Whilst we have this sort of supervision, certificated and compliance approved by the regulators, then unfortunately the same type of inadequate management will thrive whilst the troops at the coalface carry the can either way if/when it goes wrong.

The OP has my greatest sympathy, there but for...go we all. :ugh:

[Ka8 Flyer]

Just a thought here:
I'm wondering if perhaps the decision to abort close to V1 due to a single ADC failure with I guess 2 remaining played a role in this?

[grounded27]

Made the correct move, knew of a bit more modern freighter that PIC decided to take off with amber break temps and allow extended gear down time to cool the brakes. All went well, never thought of engine out/gear up scenario and a thermal as result. Most likely a few thermals were most likely the most extreme case, all went well.

Worst high energy stop I had ever seen was a 743F just past V1, many tires drug to explosion, the remaining the remaining of the 16 thermaled on the RWY. No fire.

Most likely many old heavy aircraft have taken off with excessive temps.

None the less, crappy to hear of a company taking action against an airman for making a safe decision. Unheard of today!

[gulfairs]

At v1-10, one does not really have time to trouble shoot an instrument failure with a 12 hour mostly night sector just after V2.
Your comment sound like my flight operations jury. after two days deliberation he did wrong.
I was given an option on leaving though, "If I left I would not have an adverse report on my records, If I stayed, which I could have done there was an admonishment recorded but I could not pull my super lump sum and stay.Which I considered an option. 90 days later a capitalization of ones super was allowed and one could continue in employment with the airline.
My pride would not allow a flight engineers opinion over rule my status.
I went on to Europe and flew BAe1-11,s until the gulf war commenced and I then effectively gave up jet aviation, except for a short burst on a freighter.
( pota poty for a toilet, no rest facils, no galley no where to even wash ones hands if one used the portapotty) and on 8 hour sectors. FUN FUN!
I flew a Pa32;260 on my own charter company and had a king sized ball.
My only enemy was CAA, but they can be subdued. The pen is mightier than the sword.

[Mozella]

..... snip ........I must believe that you (sic) FE was a fool, an UNSAFE fool. ........ snip ..........and, in any case, the Captain is always responsible... I'm going to guess that you know nothing about flying airliners which require flight engineers (or first officers for that matter). Actually, based on your statement, I would assume you don't even have a drivers license. Nearly all mechanical equipment, including your tropical drink blender, has a set of operating parameters. The "book" always addresses what is safe and what is not safe. Airplanes, like blenders, have operating parameters too.

In a nutshell, after something like a high speed abort is safely under control, the next job of the F/E, F/O is to look in the performance manual and enter a chart with the appropriate data; i.e. speed, weight, etc.

Then, his/her duty is to advise the Captain about what the chart says. The answer might be that the energy absorbed by the braking system makes a subsequent take off unsafe. Or, it might be that the chart says a take off would be safe, perhaps with a period of time of flying with the gear down.

In any event, lying to the Captain is usually considered a serious breach of duty. If the chart says a take off is safe, the F/E is duty bound to say so and that in no way makes him a fool.

Naturally, the Captain is the one faced with deciding what to do and will be the person held responsible. And, according to the OP, that's what happened.

I was an F/E for a while before working my up to International Wide Body Captain. I'm certainly glad I never had to fly with anyone holding your (frankly nutty sounding) point of view about who is a fool and who isn't.

[SMOC]

Well said!

[gulfairs]

That was the norm for Air NZ.

[kuobin]

But how you decided that 2 hours of cooling was enough?was that number from manual?If yes,then nobody should doubted you.:rolleyes:

[gulfairs]

When I operated out of Honolulu, if we had to taxi back to the terminal it was an automatic complete set of wheels change or wait 2 and a bit hours with nitrogen cooling.
The Tyre bead is the weak link in all aircraft tyres particularly WHEN EACH WHEEL IS HOLD UP 24 TONNES

[stilton]

'None the less, crappy to hear of a company taking action against an airman for making a safe decision. Unheard of today! '



If that's the case at your outfit, good for you but you don't have to go very far down the aviation food chain where that's very common.


Being 'too safe' is a subjective judgement in many cases and if you're perceived as an economic liability ( in the absence of effective union representation) you'll be gone.

[No Fly Zone]

*Not* an expert, but... if the FE says the second attempt is still OK, make the run and TO, keep the gear, speed and climb rate down for a few minutes and cool the trucks before tucking them - IF seriously pushed for a TO time. The flip side is your much safer side, to delay for on-ground cooling and make a +/- normal run for the second attempt. Odds of a second TO Failure were small, but what if? Would you have had enough brake left to stop that 742? ghad that happened, we know that you would have used max reverse, numbers that never count, and kept it on until you were ready to back up, but would it have been enough? There is a finite limit to braking force, even with four feet on the pedals and/or max (RTO) effort.
If the facts are whole and correct, most would agree that you got screwed. In 1985 - or in 2014, a two hour delay for safety just happens. There must have been something else in the package. In any case, I'm glad to know the the later outcome worked OK for you. I sense a major miss-match between you and that old employer. Not interested in in the details, but I guess bugging outo was a very good choice.