Originally Posted by
Capt Quentin McHale
Dave Therhino,
With regards to BA38, I'm not totally convinced of the results of the investigation, extensive as it was. My point being, after having read the final report, with all that was done throughout the investigation I believe one important thing was omitted. That being undercowl "heat soak".
Capt, I was involved in the early portion of the BA38 investigation. Fuel waxing/freezing was one of the very first things we looked at. Short answer is that the fuel never actually got
that cold - very cold, yes, but cold enough to cause the observed problems, no. And remember, there was quite a bit of fuel recovered after the accident, so we had solid data on the fuel characteristics.
I was no longer involved by the time they were testing the FOHE icing (I was working 747/767 at the time, brought into the early investigation as a subject matter expert), but I know several people who were and they were quite convinced they'd found the smoking gun. Further, we were able to go back through historical data and find evidence that this wasn't the first time the FOHE had iced up (e.g.otherwise unexplained increases in oil temp during steady state operation) - just the first time it had caused a major problem.