UA 777 door torn off

[HondaFIA]

The USA Today article says:

[TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — The side door of a United Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft was torn off Monday when it suddenly moved away from a passenger gantry at Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek airport, airport officials said.
None of the 143 passengers and 11 crew on the plane that was bound for Nagoya, Japan, were injured.

"It was probably a communication problem," an airport official told AFP.

An inquiry was launched by the Aviation Safety Council into the cause of the incident, the second one here in less than a week.

On Thursday last week a piece of wing came loose from a Fokker passenger plane flying on a domestic route, breaking two of its windows.]


But Taiwan news are reporting that the UA flight was ready to depart early and the doors were already closed and ready for push back when the airline decided to pick up a few more passengers for the flight. So they re-opened the doors and got the jetway back to the aircraft to allow the extra passengers to board. Then the plane was pushed back and the door was torn off the 777, they also report that the pilots did not notice until a few minutes later when it was ready to taxi.

[MrBernoulli]

" ..... they also report that the pilots did not notice until a few minutes later when it was ready to taxi."

Always blame the pilots first, eh? And did any of the cabin staff, standing right next to the door, notice!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Diverse]

Or the dispatcher, passengers looking out of windows, any staff on the ground with the tug, aircraft next door, nobody heard it? It must have taken some force to rip off a 777 door. Maybe that part of the story is lost in translation. Not just the cabin crew involved in this Mr Bernoulli, shouldn't a door opened indicator flash up on the flight deck?

[L337]

shouldn't a door opened indicator flash up on the flight deck

Me thinks.

If the door was open, then a light would be on. It can only be torn off it was already open.....so no change to the status of the light on the flight deck.

[M.Mouse]

When it says side door does that mean the back door and the front door were OK?

[Jerricho]

Just WTF does ther Fokker incident mentioned in the report have to do with this?

Farkin' journos :rolleyes:

[Ron & Edna Johns]

Unbelievable stuff. How many more times does this sort of thing have to happen before all staff realise that: if you want to re-open the door, you have to get the Captain's approval? Well, that's the way it is in my company and I'd be very surprised if other airlines are daring to do otherwise!

[barit1]

Isn't this just another case of an interrupted checklist? Just like a go-around leading to a bellyflop?

Aw well - I'm sure the extra fares from the added pax will easily pay for a new door... :}

[SeldomFixit]

Ron - care to elucidate on just how that became standard practice in your company ?

[Ron & Edna Johns]

Seldomfixit: I've no idea on the precise history, on how it became SOPs. But it's there in writing. Did it come from Boeing even? No idea. But it really is just common sense: when all doors are closed the crew are calling up for push-back clearance and the aircraft is about to move. If anyone outside wants to reattach the bridge/reopen the door (for a forgotten pax, for example), they either radio the skipper or gesture as such to the boss F/A, who in turn calls the skipper. He then tells the tug driver to stop the push/don't start the push, and then tells the cabin ok, go ahead, open the door. Simple.

You don't just go and open a door without getting the ok from the Captain.........

[Diverse]

Don't know who your company is Ron but that's exactly whta happens at our place.

[16 blades]

..then exactly who the **** is in charge of your aircraft? Nobody should do ANYTHING out of the ordinary on an ac without the Capt's approval, surely?

16B

[Diverse]

16 blades ?

if that comment was aimed at me I agree with you and Ron, hope there's no misunderstanding.

[DarkStar]

Perhaps a FAA mod will be announced - Fitment of a 'Door torn off' indicator light on the Flightdeck. :rolleyes:

[Flight Detent]

Darkstar.......

Don't laugh to loudly, we've got an "APU RUNNING" light in our NGs.
And I always thought one could tell by other means if the APU is running!!!

FD :confused:

[16 blades]

Not 'aimed' as such, Diverse - it's just that if my loadie opened doors without asking me first / telling me about it if he had to do it quickly for some reason, I'd rip his knackers off. Do skippers really have so little authority now in the civ world??

16B

[sammypilot]

I have read and re-read these posts but nowhere do I see the suggestion that the Captain HADN'T given his permission to re-open the door. All the inital post says is that the Flight Deck Crew didn't notice the damage until they were ready to taxi. Wouldn't it be better is people read the initial post before wandering off down side tracks.

[speed freek]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that there was an EICAS page with all the doors, baggage/cargo holds, etc. as well as a 'yellow' listing of exactly what's open on the upper EICAS? If that's the case how come "it wasn't noticed until they were ready to taxi"? As someone said earlier, something's been lost in translation.

Cheers.

[Safety Guy]

Flight Detent:

I believe that the APU RUNNING light was installed as it is required to certify the NG for ETOPs. Sounds silly, but apparently somebody got pretty close to running out of fuel over the water many years ago. It was later determined that the crew neglected to shut down the APU after engine start.

[HotDog]

What ever happened to the old Flight Engineer's annunciator panel?

[Ranger One]

Thought I remembered an old thread (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=933280#post933280) on this topic... seems 777 doors may be relatively easy to tear off, by design...

R1

[Flight Detent]

Safety Guy,

Thanks for the input, but no, it's not for that reason!

It's actually to confirm the APU is not running prior to starting the takeoff roll, you see in our NGs, the APU is not allowed to be running during the takeoff!

And as I said, surely they could tell the APU is not running by other means, like maybe: the EGT is decreasing below normal idle reading after a minute has passed since the switch was selected off!!

Cheers, FD :\

[Bomber Harris]

Safety Guy,
I really don't know where you heard that story but it is absolute rubbish. The apu will burn about 150kgs per hour. If the aircraft was airbourne for 10 hours (which I think is a bit of a stretch) the APU would use about 1.5 tonnes. This would use about half of the typical landing reserves. So maybe we could rephrase the story to make it sound slightly possible......

Aircraft landed at planned destination with less than legal minimums due to APU being left running or....

Aircraft diverted in order to land with legal reserves due to APU left running!!!

Flight Detent, I\'m not sure which NG you fly, but the one I fly is a Boeing 737. In my MEL it states that you must have the APU running for the entire flight if you have an engine generator INOP. Not only that, Boeing recommended to us that we leave the APU running for short sectors as starting/stopping was costing more in maintenance than the few drops of fuel it used on a 45 minute flight.

So you definatly can leave the APU running for takeoff on a Boeing NG. Not intending to be smart....but is there another aircraft referred to as an NG? I never was much of a spotter!