Ba 768 Ife ?????

[Bye]

Just been watching BA768 G-EUPT A319 on my spotter box ( SBS system )

it was at Fl 340 then dropped to 10,000 ft skwawking 7700 at 420 Kts, then slowed to 295 Kts.

was heading to Oslo over north sea then turned back and has just crossed the coast at Clacton, looks to be inbound Stanstead.


EDIT now looks like Heathrow landing, going downwind at 3950 FT

[Bye]

looks to have landed ok as its just turned off the runway.

[Airbubba]

Yep, I can see it on my AirNav RadarBox landing to the east on the north runway at LHR. Looks like they are down now...

[adverse-bump]

spotters in 3-2-1...

[Bye]

Sorry for putting it in news and rumours.

i assume its only news if it turns into a load of bodies.

[Jofm5]

From Incident: British Airways A319 overhead North Sea on Jun 27th 2009, emergency descent (http://avherald.com/h?article=41bd060f&opt=0)

A British Airways Airbus A319-100, registration G-EUPT performing flight BA-768 from London Heathrow,EN (UK) to Oslo Gardermoen (Norway) with 70 passengers, was at FL390 overhead the North Sea before the Dutch Coast north of Amsterdam, when the airplane performed an emergency descent to FL100 due to loss of cabin pressure and turned back towards London Heathrow, where the airplane landed safely on runway 09L about 40 minutes later.

[Swedish Steve]

Both engine bleeds failed independently about 5 mins apart. The cabin climbed slowly and the aircraft descended fast enough, so the masks did not deploy.

[CPA]

Hi, I was on the plane BA768 and there wasn't much info at the time just a rapid descent to 10,000 ft and a slow run back to Heathrow (the pilot did state that there had been a cabin depressurisation), there were storms around and the pilot didn't want to go near them hence the diversion from Stanstead back to Heathrow, could anyone shed any light on the severity of this incident?

Chris

[Jofm5]

could anyone shed any light on the severity of this incident?



If an aircraft enounters depressurisation then it must descend to 10,000 feet quickly to where the air is breathable without assistance - the point of the oxygen masks is that if the depressurisation is sudden it gives the pax around 10 mins of oxygen to breath whilst the pilot loses the altitude.

Not being able to fly above 10,000 feet means that the fuel consumption is increased so the aircrafts range is decreased. It is not unusual to turn back to a company base where maintenance facilities are located and the pax can be put on to different flights. Had this flight continued to oslo and maintenance not been available then the return flight of the aircraft could also only operate at 10,000 feet.

[Fargoo]

Chris,
The cabin is pressurised on the Airbus normally by two airconditioning units (packs). In normal flight they are fed independently with bleed air from their associated engines.
In your case one of those bleeds shut off due to a fault and this left the other engine bleed to supply air to both packs via a crossfeed valve. Unfortunately a few minutes later the bleed air system on the other engine also failed.
This would cause both packs to shut down and as the aircrat isn't completely air tight a very slow leak in cabin pressure would begin to happen.
Not a severe incident and the crew are trained to deal with this, the descent is handled rapidly to a safe altitiude and at a guess I would say the oxygen masks didn't drop? This indicates that there was at no time a dangerously low cabin pressure.
Inconvienient for you as a passenger and costly to the airline in monetary terms but not particularly risky on a short flight.
Hope you have a more sucessful onward journey :ok:

[CPA]

Thanks for the response guys, you are right the masks didn't drop so we must of made it down to the right level in time, it was quick! but at no time was the pressure loss noticeable in the cabin, the pilot was fantastic she explained what had happened once we were down to 10K feet and was available for questions once we had landed.