radken
Twins and their certifications ....
It is fortuitous when aircraft we build sometimes warn us, through the medium of non-fatal demonstration, of our various engineering, production, or operational oversights. The penalty for ignoring or white-washing these shortcomings is often a quite fatal “Can you see the problem now?” event later on. I often think on the “almost fatal” DC 10 aft cargo door incident” near Windsor back in ’72. The machine essentially told us we’d better step up, pay the price, and make an immediate fix, or pay an even greater price later, which, of course, was the way it turned out in France for Turkish Airlines. Oh, yeah, the industry had plenty of money to get the job done right the second time around. Exposed, however, was the soft underbelly of the cozy FAA/industry sleeping arrangements vis a vis grounding AD’s and non-grounding service bulletins demanded by the bean counters.
No different today as the high stakes players continue with a much more advanced game of “‘kidding yourself” called ETOPS. Nobody back in ’72 flew twins much over lonely waters, but a new industry driving paradigm came to pass in the 80‘s, that “By God, we’re going to fly over those damn oceans with no more than two motors and two pilots come hell or high water!” Thus we took our first steps off the rock on to the sandy shore and murky world of our engineered to the max big and small twins.
I won’t belabor the issue of what one or two more engines brings to the safety of flight equation insofar as the flying public masses are concerned. Ignorance of these issues on their part is certainly pure bliss as they sit suspended in space three hours southwest of Honolulu in their two motored, complex retractables.
Was that flaming LI battery pack in the 787 last week related to the on-ground APU start? Are they starter batteries? Was that a portent of something very dangerous that could happen in flight, a fortuitous message? What if they’d had to start it 3 hr’s SW of Honolulu say at FL 300? I don’t know if batt’s are even used for 78‘s APU start when either of the engines are operating. But what if they were already operating SE out there at their drift down altitude, and had to start APU. Would this battery fire have occurred? Could the plastic hull integrity have been easily compromised, pressure lost, and further descent made mandatory, with fuel consumption increasing to an even more ridiculous level? Would a good landfall have then been within reach? QF 32 (380) with two more motors comes to mind. The latter probably would not have made it. And what about an empennage fire starting in flight from that battery rack. Took the fire dept. 20 min. to kill it? What kind of fire suppression is on board to help out in this instance? Real questions needing real answers from certification folks.