Emirates A380 in YPPH

[brendan26]

A medical emergency has grounded a Sydney-bound Emirates A380 this morning, with the flight forced to land at Perth.
The A380, with 490 passengers aboard, was operating a Dubai to Sydney non-stop flight when a passenger suffered a stroke, forcing the diversion to Perth.
The plane touched down at Perth at 6.34am but the aircraft was further delayed by an unspecified technical problem. This delayed its departure for Sydney, which resulted in the flight's crew reaching the limit of their shift hours.
Emirates was then forced to the expense of flying a fresh crew from Sydney on a Qantas flight. They are due to arrive at 1.15pm.
The A380 is expected to depart for Sydney by 2pm.
The passengers are being kept in the in-transit lounge due to a customs requirement, although Emirates has been able to get 40 passengers transferred to domestic flights to Sydney so they can meet appointment and function deadlines.
The unusual emergency marks just the second visit of the giant A380 jet to Perth,
On October 14 last year a Qantas A380 flew to Perth, on a demonstration flight before entering service on the Melbourne-Los Angeles route.

[Wod]

Good outcome. Hopefully the passenger benefited from the earlier hospitalisation at Perth.

And (grandmas & eggs) that's why airlines check out alternates as well as primaries when a new type is introduced.

[IFOT]

Could the "unspecified technical problem" be due to there being no Emirates Engineers in Perth licensed on the A380? I imagine they would need to fly one in from Sydney to complete the transit check.

[Awol57]

Probably. The rumour I heard (and this is a Rumour site after all) was that the landing was at a weight that required a check of some description prior to the flight occuring (I don't believe that it was over MLW or anything, just that a check of some sort was required). That and a new crew to finish the flight.

Perhaps an airbus driver can shed some light on the issue?

[Hippolite]

I don't know the Dugong but...

DXB to SYD diversion to PER would require an overweight landing?

Surely its only about 40t of fuel from overhead PER to SYD...the Dugong must arrive at SYD very close to its MLW normally then?

[Capn Bloggs]

A380 driver,
Out of interest, what pax number did you have on board last trip to SY, what fuel did you arrive with and what's your holding fuel flow?

[Wod]

Of course. Fuel is tuppence a tonne in the sandpit and 10 guineas a tonne in Oz. Naturally you would take fuel as ballast if commercial load permits:)

[SOPS]

Wod...I assure you...you have no idea what you are talking about...we DO NOT carry fuel "as ballast' (as you call it) from DXB to Australia.

[Ken Borough]

Sops,

Just stick to facts and play the ball rather than the man. :mad:

Does EK have a 'fuel saving' policy under which it tankers fuel from a less expensive airport to an airport at which the fuel is more expensive, taking into account the cost of the fuel burned to carry fuel? Is so, does DXB/SYD fall into that policy?

[PorkKnuckle]

Yes, EK do tanker fuel like many other airlines do - when it is cost efficient. Not very efficient on a 13hr flight though.

No they do not tanker to YSSY. EK tankers fuel INTO Dubai from certain locations.

Contrary to popular myth, EK do NOT pay a pittance for fuel out of Dubai. They do make massive savings in other areas though!

Never heard of fuel being carried purely to serve as ballast. Even on an Airbus.

The capt can sign off his own transit check. But not an overweight landing check, if indeed one was required in YPPH.

I'm surprised they'd still be above the MLW by YPPH but still - would've thought it'd be more sensible to have jettisoned the fuel inbound to YPPH if they'd known there'd be a problem with the OWL check. Either no one thought of that or maybe the problem was not related to Overweight Landing. With the history so far of the Whale, the latter wouldn't surprise anyone.

[Wizofoz]

I'm sure A380-300 will fill in the accurate details, but what he is talking about is the fact that the 380 operates to the old A340 schedule, in spite of being significantly faster. This has meant it regularly arriving at Sydney before curfew and having to hold until the airport opens.

It is EK policy for commercial reasons to stick to this schedule and carry the extra fuel needed to hold until 6am.

As to Pax numbers, it's chockas into SYD nearly every day. I recently tried for 3 days to get on ID90 and eventually had to go via BNE.

And yes, we pay retail for fuel, and am in fact currently getting hammered (though not to the same extent as the likes of CX) by the fact that we are hedged too high. The UAE exports OIL (and Dubai not much of that). It has no refining capability and buys the finished product from the Petro-Cos the same as every-one else.

[SOPS]

Ummm I was playing "the ball"...............I am sick of people thinking that we sit here in the desert and pay nothing for our fuel and just "tank" it around the world
Fact is...we are "asked" every day to make our fuel uplift from EVERY station including DXB the minimum possible (at the Captains desrection of course)

[Dick and Jane]

Contrary to the widely held belief, EK has a very stringent fuel policy which includes tankering in cheaper fuel from certain stations, in some cases up to MLW. Most commonly fuel is brought in from Kuwait, Damman in Saudi and Tripoli in Libya. Fuel is not carried to hold over SYD on EK412 for an 0600 arrival, in fact when the flight is planned for a shorter than usual flight time it is held on the ground in DXB.

As for the A380 loads, well it's full every time it leaves the ground, except perhaps on the SYD-AKL sector, which is almost full. The Whale sells itself at the moment because people want to try it. Am sure SQ and QF are experiencing the same :ok:

[PorkKnuckle]

Sorry Wiz but that was a very short-lived policy of carrying the extra fuel to hold. Now they delay the flight where necessary (usually it delays itself) to achieve an end-of-curfew arrival. No carrying fuel just to hold until end-of-curfew.

Why they don't just re-schedule it now that The Whale is on that sector, I have no idea.

I have on many occasions tankered fuel out of Dubai and on some occasions tankered it INTO Dubai. But EK policy is NOT to tanker to MLW. Dick and/or Jane, you might have to have another read of the fuel policy.

The "green" flight into San Francisco operates a hosed down and "clean" machine with minimum fuel (unlike other sectors???). If they were serious abot the environment, we'd not be tankering fuel (and burning 10-50% of it) on ANY sector. If they were REALLY serious..... we'd not be flying at all.

SOPS, I'm happy to point out what actually happens but beyond that I don't really care what people think we do or don't pay for the fuel. Why do you give a rat's arse what anyone thinks of EK's policies?

[Capn Bloggs]

Thanks A380. :ok: They're big numbers! :eek:

[willadvise]

Good stuff A380-800 Driver. I am still struggling with the reason why you can't dump fuel to get below MLW.
If MLW is 391 and the EZFW is 360 for this flight. This means you could still have 31T on landing at Per at MLW after dumping. Is this not enough? Do you still have to have an alternate in this case (ignoring weather). If so what are your alternates (Learmonth, Adelaide?).

Cheers
WA

[Spanner Turner]

Of course, if the Pilot can confirm the following details as listed in the MM below, deferal of the overweight ldg inspection (up to 60,000kgs over MLW) is allowed for 5cycles.

HARD/OVERWEIGHT LANDING INSPECTION
.
General
.
Inspection requirements
(a) The primary source to identify a suspected hard landing is the flight crew.
.
(b)After an overweight landing under following conditions confirmed by the pilot, it is allowed to postpone load analysis (SAR file analysis) for a maximum of 5FC:
- Landing gross weight (LW) was less or equal to Maximum Landing Weight (MLW) plus 60t. (LW<=MLW + 60t)

- Vertical speed at touchdown was less than 360ft/min. (Vz<360ft/min)

- Aircraft attitude at landing was normal (Main landing gear touch down symetrical).
.
The SAR file analysis with the Load Analysis Tool (LAT) have to be performed within this timeframe to confirm or not the need of inspection. After such overweight event it is requested that the A/L report to Airbus the event and provide the SAR file and the computed report when it will be available.






380-800 driver, good explanation of the Dugong fuel/jett system and limitations of such. (Fuel system on this thing is very complex/detailed)

:ok:

.

[PorkKnuckle]

Sorry Wiz, I stand corrected on that Whale fuel policy for Sydney; I was told the other day they'd canned it after only a few days of silliness.

You cannot jettison to below Max Landing weight in the majority of cases if the ZFW is high.

As I said, I'm surprised - not being a Whale rider and all it did seem unlikely to me.

At the risk of pedanticism,

ADDNL 6000

NO TANKERING RECOMMENDED

I guess there's a difference between "tankering" (carrying extra fuel to avoid refueling) and carrying additional for "curfew" holding. Not least the 1% rule.

[Wizofoz]

No sweat, PK

[L1011]

A reasonable thread for a change. Here's my 2c worth:

The fuel dumping scenario is even more complicated than A388 pointed out. The aircraft tends to fly at fairly aft CG positions - 41% in the cruise is not unusual. This means that there is a fair amount of fuel in the trim tank (THS).

While theoretically it is possible to dump all the fuel except the feed tanks, in actual practice the CG limit is reached with fuel still in the trim tank. this leads to a very puzzling ECAM that doesn't appear to be connected to the dumping going on.

End result you will probably land with feed tank fuel plus trim tank and a very interesting CG position.

The Overweight Landing check can be conducted 'remotely' by MCC but this requires a fairly large data file to be downloaded off the engineering PC and transmitted to Base. No procedure exists to accomplish this task - you'll have to wing it on the day.

BTW the aircraft lands beautifully at 450 Tonnes :cool:

[Wiley]

I cheered with uncontained joy the day I was summoned to leave the 'aircraft designed by idiots for experts to fly' to fly 'the aircraft designed by experts for idiots to fly'.

The models of Airbus I flew (for seven loooong and all too often eventful years) were two generations earlier than the 380, (310-300 and 300-600), but I see Airbus have stuck true to form - still making an overly complex engineering wonder (or nightmare, depending upon your point of view) that requires the operating crews to be ever on guard for myriad traps for young players.

(Thirteen years after leaving the Bus, I could still draw the 310/300 fuel system schematic for you and explain that **** ~20,000' trim tank forward/aft automatic transfer system. It was so complicated, I had to get it into my head to the point where, even after all these years, it's never left me.)

The Whale's very, very nice from a passenger's point of view, and I suppose I should be reassured to know that the crew up the front are unlikely to be bored on those long sectors as they keep themselves up to speed on the next trap the 'boos has in store for them.

[By George]

Not wanting to start yet another 'Boeing versus Airbus' argument but where I work they call the Airbus course, "The Boeing Appreciation School".

[Visual Procedures]

Hey George, did mummy give you a Mickey Mouse badge for coming up with that all by yourself? :}