An olde Airbus rumour

[Down and Welded]

Some time in 1986, an international flight outbound from Beijing and operated by 'an Airbus aircraft' suffered a double engine failure and was forced to dead-stick into a military base on Taiwan. The passengers and crew were held in a hanger pending the arrival of a relief flight. My informer struck up a conversation with the flight crew who said the problem was caused by a design fault in the Airbus fuel system.

Anyone have the slightest inkling about this?

[B2N2]

Empty tanks and the engines stop?
But I expected that to be a little more universal and not limited to the Scarebus.

[Airbubba]

If the incident occurred in 1986, I think the only Airbus planes in airline service at the time were the A300B4, the A300-600 and the A310. I flew the A306 and A310 years ago but never heard the fuel exhaustion story.

Garuda had A300B4's (with the 'two pilot' FF cockpit) in 1986 and might have flown out of PEK to JKT on a route near Taiwan. Dynasty and Korean had A300's but probably wouldn't fly from PEK over Taiwan.

Some of the incidents of this era show up in online databases, many do not from my observation.

As always, be skeptical unless you are assured 'now, this is no s**t...' ;)

[Down and Welded]

Thanks Airbubba. I don't what the nature of such a 'design fault' might have been... or if the aircraft had indeed run out of fuel (my old informant was speaking of the experience as being not too far into the flight). His recollection had them landing in Taiwan, after all... so hardly likely that they departed with insufficient fuel.

He's elderly and in retirement, but otherwise a credible source. He traveled the world for over 20 years on installation projects for a US electronics company.

If no person on this broad forum has heard of anything remotely like this, we might cut the old gentleman some slack. But I do have to ask...

[dixi188]

I spent 13 years on the A300 and don't remember hearing of anything like this.
I seem to recall there was a problem on the early Boeing 767s with switch positions to do with fuel, and the wrong ones being operated in the climb. A bit like the HPR7 Herald with the fuel heater and LP cock switches being close together and similar.

[fox niner]

Philippine airlines also had A300’s back then. So did Thai airways. I remember being a passenger on board both of them when I was a kid.

[tdracer]

Dixi, what you're thinking of on the 767 was the Electronic Engine Control (EEC) ON/OFF switches were located on the aisles stand, just below the Fuel ON/OFF switches. There were two cases in the first few years after the 767 Entry Into Service where the flight crew was going to select the EEC switch but turned off the fuel instead. :eek:
First time it happened we thought it was a fluke, the second time we knew we had a human factors issue and the EEC switches were relocated to the overhead.

[ATC Watcher]

I was involved with Taiwan ATC in the 80's and never heard this rumour either.
The passengers and crew were held in a hanger pending the arrival of a relief flight.
Also if pax were involved it would have been difficult to keep it confidential for that long me thinks. .
Last, in the 80's , unlike today, int'l flights to PEK were quite few , and A300/310's not that many in the region, so it should be relatively easy to find out which airline flew there, towards the south , to be near Taiwan airspace.As AirBuba said, my bet would be on Garuda or Philippines, and with those 2 it would not have easy to keep it off the records. even in the 80's.

[Down and Welded]

Thanks all for these musings. We can be cautious with this old chap. He once swore blue (over Bundy & Cokes at his place in Florida... he was a Bundaberg fan and a rum drinker) that he and I had flown together on a chopper with the door off on a project in Western Australia. We definitely worked together in WA, but NEVER flew together in a chopper. So his recollection of this incident might be wrong as to country, city-of-departure, aircraft, nature of the emergency, and even where they landed. He went to a multitude of countries over a couple of decades doing sales, apps engineering, and field installation. So he's got a lot of experiences to mix up should his recall be failing him.

One does have to wonder, how would a flight crew held in a military hanger in a foreign country (per this recollection) actually know what the problem was that caused their engine-out emergency. If they knew, they'd have been able to deal with it at the time, wouldn't they?

I guess I'll never get to the bottom of this, unless someone here can recall a set of similar circumstances albeit in a different context.

Thanks again for your participation.

[DaveReidUK]

Also if pax were involved it would have been difficult to keep it confidential for that long me thinks.

Agreed.

It's inconceivable that, if it actually happened, no first-hand accounts of the event have emerged over the last 30-odd years.

[BEagle]

The only technical error leading to fuel exhaustion in an A310 which I can recall was nowhere near Taiwan.

This was Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378. Basically, the landing gear failed to retract due to a maintenance error, then the crew relied on FMS fuel predictions seemingly unaware that there was no 'gear down transit' option available. The F/O realised that they were burning fuel at a much greater rate than predicted by the FMS, but the captain believed the FMS and pressed on, then failed to divert in time when low fuel warnings were displayed - so they ran out of fuel and crash landed just short of the RW at Vienna airport, fortunately without anyone being killed.

[megan]

Memory can be a funny thing, even when old age and possible dementia is not involved. At a reunion related to a course mate "remember when". He later produced documentary evidence that my story was bollox. Salutary lesson I thought.

[Down and Welded]

Dead right Megan. Now, I've no intention of unnecessarily prolonging this discussion, but I emailed my old 84-yr old mate. He uses an iMac and 'Dragon Dictate' to write emails. He came back with the following (Wikipedia tells me the first A320 flight was in Feb 1987).

"...yeah that happened in the late 80s, we were slated to fly from Beijing to Tokyo then on to the states. We were at 35,000 ft. I was sound asleep in the window seat when Fred shook me and declared…"Milt wake up we're going down" I was groggy and said what do you mean we're going down, he said the engines have quit and we're going down!
We were on an Airbus 320 a fly by wire plane that I never liked and when we were in India one of them flew into the ground. I'm looking out my window and I can see the boys in the cockpit are trying to start the engines, the one engine but I could see was popping smoke and flame but no start.
Looking out my window, off in the distance I could see some land, the pilot was slowly turning the aircraf towards that land. In the meantime the flight attendants we're instructing us to put on our lifevests because we were going to have to land the ocean. Thank goodness the pilot was doing his best to get us to that land… and with his cool concentration he did it… he dead sticked her onto the runway at Fuyoko Japan(not too sure about that spelling). This was an Air Force Base, they pulled us over with a tractor to a hanger, and with many Air Force people guided us into the hanger. They didn't know what to do with us, only only place to sit was on The concrete floor, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, at least there was one toilet in there. They also kept the aircrew there, so I walked over to the captain and asked him what the hell had caused the engines to quit… he was pretty upset and said those damn Chinese don't know how to make good jet fuel, which clogs the filter, he said there was only one fuel filter on the 320.

We were captured in the hanger as I remember for about 6 1/2 hours, when another aircraft arrived to take us to Tokyo."

Areas in which to cut slack... [1] whether or not it was an A320, [2] the fact that what he thought he could see of the engine from his window gave any indication the 'boys in the cockpit were trying to start the engines' (although they probably would have been?), [3] the last recount had them landing in Taiwan.

But it seems to me there's just too much recollection (re-recollection) here for this to be utterly a product of a failing intellect.

In case there's anything new in this quote, over to olde Ppruners.