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Old 2nd Aug 2004, 22:56
  #56 (permalink)  
Cap 56
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Dubai
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Woodpecker

If you have a fuel leak there are two issues to look at:

1. It comes somewhere downstream of the spar shut of valve
2. it does not

In case 1 you shut down the # and the story ends in a (n-1) approach, in case 2 you use as much fuel as possible from the leaking tank respecting the unbalance limits. If it’s the center tank you may consider dumping it if you think it’s a safer option.

Respecting these limits, requires you to know what the limiting factors are. On most jets this is a one engine configuration with high flap setting limiting the moment produced by the ailerons to counter the roll induced.

If the tank leaks you better get on the ground quickly. To avoid any complications you do not want to have any hot spots, read hot brakes and therefore will try to avoid overheating the brakes using the max reverse allowed.

Until now I have no information that this is unacceptable and I do not expect that it will pop up.

I will however inform myself on the flash temperatures of the fuel used however from my ATLP courses I recall from memory that it’s not such a big problem under normal pressures and temperatures.

What I do remember very clearly is that my teacher who had a Masters in this stuff told us that you could throw a match in this kind of fuel without any problem. Needless to say that we were all surprised.

So in this case you land, use rev till 100 kts, then brakes and shut down the engines while you are on the APU. I know this last paragraph has a touch of hindsight and I would probably not have gone that far in my analysis but what is the problem if the fire brigade is standing next to you and your aircraft is cold.
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