BA turnback

[4Greens]

Article in Today Friday's Times re BA flight turn back due pilots feeling unwell - lack if ventilation on Flight Deck.

[OldLurker]

That'd be this one?

AAIB investigation to Boeing 777-236, G-RAES (https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib-investigation-to-boeing-777-236-g-raes)

[Lonewolf_50]

That'd be this one?

AAIB investigation to Boeing 777-236, G-RAES (https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib-investigation-to-boeing-777-236-g-raes)

An uneventful landing was carried out and it was found that debris in the conditioned air duct below the cockpit floor was almost completely blocking airflow to the flight deck. The source of the debris and how long it had been present could not be determined. FOD of another sort. :(

[Mr Optimistic]

Pax here. To affect the crew wouldn't there need to be a significant pressure difference between FD and cabin, in which case would expect to hear the air whistling through any gaps it can find. Such noise hasn't been mentioned so am I missing something?

[Tinstaafl]

Without sufficient fresh air entering the flightdeck, and with walls & doors preventing air circulation from the cabin, the air in that little closed room will eventually become stale.

[back to Boeing]

And more importantly hot as hell!!

[Pace]

A pressure diffetential could not occur unless the cockpit was sealed.The doors had to be sealed which they are not or pressure will always equalise?
Temperature could be higher in the cockpit than the cabin so it maybe warmer or colder but that in itself would cause sweating or shivering?

It is unlikely with the airmass in the cockpit that the carbon dioxide level would increase dramatically in an hour causing faster breathing and usually tingling so we are left with pollutants which would cause lightheadedness and the other symptoms they experienced ?

Pace

[oleostrut]

captain and his two co-pilots began experiencing nausea, headache, light-headedness, and "a constant urge to take deep breaths and difficulty maintaining concentration


These are possible signs of hypoxia.

The cabin and flight deck are on separate pressurized sources of conditioned air. While not totally sealed, the door to the flight deck could easily hold some pressure differential and allow the temp of the flight deck to rise due to lack of airflow. The EE bay is normally on the same air pac as the flight deck, and all those electronics both there and on the flight deck generate heat.

The crew responded correctly, and got the plane back on the ground safely.

[Stu B]

8 posts and no-one linking potential hypoxia with the "other" T7 saga ?
Newspaper quoted BA as saying checking the fleet had shown that cr@p blocking the air duct was not "endemic" but the article also implied that such issues were not unknown elsewhere ...