I'm almost choking on the misinformation on this forum....
One hour of battery time? Try 30 minutes (ref QF Boeing Maintenance Manual)
The Boeing 767 RAT provides hydraulics only and it CAN'T run the Hydraulic Motor Generators to provide electricity (there are check valves in the system which won't allow this). HMG's use so much power, sometimes even the electric demand pumps won't run them. The Gimli Glider must have been getting electrics from another source (pilots have reported that fast windmilling engines sometimes reach the critical 50 or so % N2/N3 required for IDG ops).
Airbusses and 777's, however, may have RAT's which provide both electrics and hydraulics, but don't quote me on that.
Yes, there is suction/gravity feed on a 747-400. This is only available for main tanks 1~4, but enough to get you to the nearest airport.
The type of 744 involved in this incident would still have had a Standby Altimeter and Airspeed Indicator after the batteries had died (the Altimeter needs power for the vibrator to overcome stiction, but I'm sure the crew would be quite able to tap it from time to time). There would be no background lighting for these instruments, but there are plenty of torches on board. There would be no heat for the pitot static system, however. You wouldn't want to fly through rain/cloud at high altitudes.
The biggest problems would be attitude and navigation. There would be no attitude after the IRS's lost their power and the Standby Horizon gyro had run down. (Note: Different aircraft type, but Qantas' 747-400ER have an Integrated Standby Flight Display which has it's own dedicated battery supply which does lasts for hours. ER's are flown on the longer oceanic routes, so this would be plus. Attitude is available from this instrument.
I can quite believe that any company undergoing great change would be more susceptible to this kind of error (people who are about to lose their jobs are not going to be focussing on what they are doing).
Re putting a galley above an equipment centre... There is more than one safeguard.
1) A drain system designed to take water away from faulty galley devices such as coffee makers, water boilers, etc.
2) Sealed floor panels in galley areas
3) Protective drip-trays mounted above the electronic equipment
4) Inbuilt redundancy in electronic devices
All of these would have had to have failed before you lost 4 generators. Incidentally, rumour has it that overseas maintenance people working on QF aircraft were omitting the protective floor barriers in some areas (although I can't say which areas were involved).
As all QF engineers know.. you have to line up all the holes in the swiss cheese before you get a catastrophic failure
Incidentally, it's highly embarrassing to hear the faulty information a supposed "Qantas engineer" supplied to the newspapers. I would suggest that he needed re-training... but we all know that the bean counters decimated the training budget
Rgds.
NSEU