A330 tanking fuel to hot / humid places & top wing icing
I am the station engineer of a Caribbean outstation. Most of my bread and butter is A330 ETOPS work.
I have a question about tanking fuel on an A330 to hot and humid countries. Apparently the fuel where I am based is very expensive compared to the UK and recently I have noticed the aircraft landing with more and more fuel. Today for example an aircraft landed with 22,600kgs.
Even though it was 32C outside and the sun was shining we still had a build up of ice on top of the wing by the wing root and above the outer tanks. The cold soaked fuel was at -18 on arrival and the condensation on top of the wing quickly turned to ice. Even after refuelling up to 53,000kgs it was still indicating -6.
I would have thought it would have been prudent to have opened the manual transfer valves and emptied the outer tanks into the main wing tanks on arrival, to at least alleviate ice build up on the outer wing surface.
Can anyone tell me what the maximum arrival fuel load would be to ensure that no fuel is in contact with the upper skin surface of the wing?
As you can imagine we are not equipped for de-icing in the Caribbean and it's quite embarrassing telling the passengers that they have to wait for the ice to melt off the wings!