News management - a necessary strategy
Warning: I'm non-professional; not crew, not engineer - just scientist guest and thanks.
I suspect we are being given a lesson in global news management. I think it is a good and necessary lesson.
Investigators, Boeing and RR engineers etc. already know that the root cause of the BA038 incident is the state of the fuel in the tanks and pipes. For fuel temperatures below -18C the AAIB have stated,
"Below this temperature little is known about the properties of ice crystals in fuel and further research may be required to enable the aviation industry to more fully understand this behaviour."
Others here have agreed that the phrase 'little is known' is shocking. But, the industry cannot, and should not, allow that damning finding to be transmitted to the general public without first indicating that there are operational actions to hopefully avoid a recurrence, and a temporary engineering solution that can be retrofitted to a class of aircraft most susceptible to the problem, namely, Boeing 777s with RR engines.
Meanwhile, quietly, the industry concentrates its efforts on understanding what does happen to fuel on these long, high and cold flights and the more permanent solution to the globally pervasive problem.
This strategy is probably the only viable one to follow. I hope that the industry is actively trying to fill the hole in its knowledge, i.e. the behaviour of cold fuel.
I still think the fuel within the main tanks stratified in some form and that a pulse of "gloop", or slurry as Airfoilmod calls it (#2178), entered the delivery systems and partially blocked them.
Moving to tongue in cheek mode - Oh to be a fly-on-the-wall in the meeting room where RR are holding their forensic investigations into the decision stage on the FOHE design. Why that design, why not the GE or P&W one? Were the GE and P&W engineers just lucky or did they have knowledge that guided them, and if they did, was this available to RR? I've lots of follow-up questions but will spare you.
There is a lot to be learned about how the industry shares knowledge and, probably more crucially, the authorities must determine how it is that, this most technically advanced global industry, does not know how fuel behaves below -18C.
I'm still staggered by that.
Regards, Tanimbar