Clarifying imbalance
One small note about the procedure:
It says that if fuel leak stops xfeed can be opened to rebalance fuel quantity or to enable use of fuel of both wings.
Opening xfeed for both wings feeding one engine:
Well the truth is opening the xfeed will further aggravate the imbalance
Let s imagine 5000 on left side and 2000 on the right side , once the xfeed is open you might end up in 5000 on left side and 0 on the right so a greater imbalance.
About rebalance:
I dont understand how Airbus can seriously call for a rebalance as imbalance procedure calls for switching off the fuel pumps on the heavier side
Now with one engine inoperative would you switch off the fuel pumps on the live engine just to rebalance?
And by just xfeeding imbalance will increase. So how rebalance is at all possible?
The only reason to xfeed should be to reach your airport if you need that fuel. As for rebalancing and xfeeding something is definitely wrong in the procedure.
Just to clarify things about imbalance, i will mention the famous never ending engine failure scenario we usually practice at v1.
The live engine has been operating on its respective wing tank side for a while, therefore the operating engine side has a lower fuel quantity that the inop side and xfeeding make sense and could hep
On the fuel leak scenario the good side has a higher fuel quantity than the "leaking" side therefore xfeeding will further increase the imbalance.
Therefore whenever the good side has a higher fuel quantity than the damaged side do not xfeed unless needed to reach an airport.
When the "live or good" side has a lower fuel quantity than the damaged side (engine failure case) xfeed will help to protect the good side
That was for xfeed.
As for imbalance procedure , in my opinion, this should only be considered with 2 "healthy" sides as it involves switching OFF pumps on the only remaining operative side.
Last edited by Citation2; 6th Sep 2017 at 20:12.