Originally Posted by
hans brinker
12 years on the bus. Except for a few months when SETWA was being worked on, always (with the exception for some tight locations or steeper taxiways) single engine taxi, inbound and outbound, APU working or not. Nothing in the APU MEL for either CEO or NEO forbidding it. Risks/Chances of the single engine failing with the APU deferred, and problems associated with that failure (needing a tow, that is pretty much it) are apparently low enough (in the time I worked there, more than 5 million taxi movements without that one engine failing).
Good to know. It’s indeed a risk assessment for the airline to make wether it is prudent to SETWA with an inop APU. Just to nitpick, it’s not per se the engine failing that might cause problems, a ‘simple’ GEN1 failure would get you stuck more or less instantly on the taxiway with a very dark aircraft. There might be other issues as well why it’s included in our MEL, but this is the most obvious one.
Anyway, just curious here. If you SETWA for departure with an INOP APU, you would have to cross-bleed start engine two during taxi. Did your company really expect you to do that?