LATAM upset SYD-AKL Mon 11 Mar
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I have a feeling I've read of similar situations over this part of Australia and there was a suggestion that high magnetic fields produced by the iron mines were affecting the controls. Anyone remember?
“The universe is hostile to computers” is a video floating around the web explaining how random cosmic particles can affect computers. It gives examples of it occurring and mentions the Qantas A330 over Western Australian as a possible.
I have a feeling I've read of similar situations over this part of Australia and there was a suggestion that high magnetic fields produced by the iron mines were affecting the controls. Anyone remember?
I merely pointed out that Airbus products are not immune to problems.
Jokat said there was no turbulence after the incident and once the plane landed the pilot came to the back of the plane in “shock”.
“I asked ‘what happened?’ and he said ‘my gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane’.”https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3502...d-crew-injured
Stuff News
“I asked ‘what happened?’ and he said ‘my gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane’.”https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3502...d-crew-injured
Stuff News
It would appear from the pilot's comments that the aircraft had suffered an electrical failure that blanked out his gauges and which also prevented him from controlling the aircraft (ie, he was unable to use the flight controls to maintain cruise flight).
Questions that need answering are:
1. Why the essential/emergency electrical backup for maintaining pilot control of the primary flight controls of the aircraft did not occur?
2. What is programmed to occur to the pitch flight control surface positions (primarily elevator and THS) when electrical power is lost...when electrical power is restored...or briefly interrupted?
3. Is this an electric/flight control program design defect that is a one off, or will it occur every time such a similar electrical fault occurs?
It is of concern that whilst the B787 electrical power system re-configures in flight in this manner, that the flight control surfaces don't at least freeze, rather then putting the aircraft into a zero or negative g bunt which eventuated in injury to passengers hitting the roof.
The FDR will be interesting to analyse when it becomes available.
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There was an AD in 2020 requiring all operators to power cycle B787s to "flush stale data" in the Common Core System every 51 days. Not sure if it could be connected if it did suffer an indication or control failure?????
Details here ....https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/US-2020-06-14
Details here ....https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/US-2020-06-14
The investigation of the QF A330 looked at the possible effect of the Learmonth facility and found there was no link.
There was no physical change to the flight path. We were enroute PER-DPS and upon arrival in DPS the engineers ran a series of checks that confirmed we had an electrical failure that lasted less than a second.
On the return journey, once again over Onslow, we had a double FMC failure. Again there was no serious adverse reaction on the aircraft other than what you would expect with a dual FMC failure. It took about 5 minutes to get one FMC back up and running. The other would not come back online.
These events were also considered during the QF72 investigation.
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Pro pilots scan PPrune in the 24 hrs after rumours of an event, to quickly determine whether something did in fact happen.
A day or so afterwards the threads descend into nonsense and the pro pilots leave.
It's taken less than 24 hours this time!
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Oeb48 might like a word.
I see there was a Virgin Atlantic 787 return with the RAT out yesterday, LHR I think.
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I don't think it was quite as you suggest, but with reported loss of primary displays and reported loss of control it is instructive to note that in the anticipated situation for which FAA-2015-0936 Interim Airworthiness Directive that at a predictable point in time the 4-off Generator Control Units could simultaneously go into Fail-safe mode and deprive the aircraft of AC electrical power, it "could result in loss of control of the airplane" and could occur regardless of flight phase That related to exceeding a 248 day powered period, so the AD instructed that power was removed at least every 120 days.
Regarding the 120 day maintenance action interval, note that in 2020, FAA-2020-0205 (not an Interim AD) was raised due to counter/timers associated with the Common Core System, that could affect data integrity after 51 days, and a power-down repeat interval of 25 days was specified in B787–81205–SB420045–00, Issue 2.
There may well be other mechanisms that have similar symptoms, so
In this case, they should have a lot more info from the aircraft, although if the CCS was interrupted, the Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorder might have some missing ARINC 664 data.
The immediate take away is that whatever did occur, the point in the flight and the actions taken recovered the situation, which 787 pilots will hopefully learn more about soon.
Purely out of interest, the TAIC have taken (seized they say!) the CVR and FDR of the B787. Does this mean the airframe can’t fly until replacements fitted (duh! -no) but where do they come from? ANZ spares, Boeing stock, LATAM bits flown in?
The airliner is grounded in Auckland. I'd imagine it won't be allowed to fly out until an investigation is undertaken by Chilean civil aviation authorities.