Latest Qf Incident,where Will All This End
 

A Qantas 747 lost power on its descent into Bangkok this afternoon.
A Qantas spokeswoman was unable to say what systems were affected on QF2 from London to Bangkok or for how long the aircraft lost power.
"This incident involved loss of electrical power on a Boeing 747 on descent into Bangkok," said Qantas chief pilot, Captain Chris Manning in a statement. "The back-up system was activated and the aircraft landed safely.
"Qantas reported the incident to Boeing, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and is also investigating its own thorough investigation. The aircraft is currently being repaired and assessed."
A spokeswoman added: "Because it is under investigation, we are are unable to provide any further information at this stage."


most probably another quality product out of Singapore,hopefully the eel sys was working this time

Thank goodness the backup power system worked, I guess battery / standby power worked. Would the scab labour, transit authority holders, done a proper test of the backup power on the transit from next week? I think a few hundred pax will thank their lucky stars we are still on the job looking after their interests. :p

...you've got to be kidding :rolleyes:

...and some people on this forum think jounalists are the devil for jumping to conclusions...

Sad thing is we all know where it will end.
Most of us have been screaming about the problem
on this forum, but we are shot down by money
grabbing manager and non-professional pilots (PAF).
Safety costs money, professional pilots & engineers cost
money. Pay the price or loose the company in a big event.
..... :ugh::ugh:

I heard it was caused by water from the PC galley flooding down onto the E racks because the large fibreglass drain/water barrier was not re-installed after the last C chk.

The top shelf has 4x GCU's, BPCU's, Etc. All A/C gone!:eek:

Lucky the inverter lives around the corner in a dryer spot.

It could have been the BIG ONE. It's only a matter of time. What do you think?

What was the rego and where was the last check done Aus. or OS?

This is not the first time this has happened but fortunately only ever happened on the ground before.

Why has it never been modified?

And what action will be taken this time to prevent future occurrences?

Poor design to start with, naturally loaders are going to step on it occasionally and not realising the importance don't report it.

Galley Raider

You seem to know a bit fairly quickly:hmm:

So s this the next round of Today Tonight specials? Alng with some industrial action stories?

J:ok:

You have to be joking mate. A landing scare in an aircraft that has multiple redundancies built in. That is a joke if ever I heard one. A bigger emergency would be getting out of the crap bars in BKK. More effort would be spent doing that than what the chaps on QF2 had to go through.:ugh:

It was OJM. A friend of mine works at SIT and heard some goss from MW.
Stores sent about a dozen new boxes up to replace anything that got wet.
The PC galley sits between doors L1 & R1 above the MEC. I am not sure when & why the water barrier was removed. Maybe this was the 1st galley flood since the C chk.

I can hear cox now, "It was not a safety issue, just a quality lapse."

I wonder how it feels coming into land with no IFE;). At least the freshly stapled EELs would have been glowing.

Investigative Journalism
 

That's a lot of investigating going on before, I assume, the initial thorough investigation has been completed! I wonder what they expect was wrong with their self proclaimed 'thorough investigation'...

Ah, that mob make me laugh...

Clarification
 

.
Assume that's aircon and not "all AC Pwr".

Please forgive my ignorance about 744 systems...
 

... but I was under the impression that a 744 could happily handle a loss of all cabin power?

My impression was that there is a small set of clockwork flight instruments up front (but you'd need to do a bit of old-fashioned navigation), and the donks would continue to turn...

But I guess you'd still need some elec power to run the fuel pumps...

So what's the story? What systems run off the batteries/inverters etc. and what can run independently?

I'm not trying to be sensationalist, but a comment in the press has been made that this could've been nasty if it'd happened way out over the drink somewhere. Anyone care to give the real story?

You don't think flying 350+ people around on an hours worth of battery power is serious? If the anecdotal evidence presented thus far proves to be accurate this is no trivial matter. I would appear that the so called 'independent' systems actually had a common point of failure and thus there is in fact, NO redundancy.
Are you going to offer an apology?
Hats off to the crew for an extraordinary job. Well done chaps.

By A/C I meant Alternating Current (Not Aircon).
So it lost all AC, and thus DC.
Standby power is a 96lbs Nicad battery feeding a static inverter that puts out 115v for about 1 hour to feed some essentials in the cockpit like VHF1, backup NAV, stby instruments with ILS. A bit like a bug smasher. Engs run ok using their own dedicated generators to power the FADECs. Fuel is gravity fed (i think).

The Self Loading Freight would be sitting in the quiet cabin (no recirc fans) in the dim battery powered emergency lights. PA also works.

It would have got interesting after 1 hour. No VHF, NAV, ILS, or Stby insts (except the magnetic compass).

Not being a pilot I am not sure how dire this would be. Comments please.

it would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if it had of happened in an airbus, with all the flyby wire flight controls.

"Not being a pilot I am not sure how dire this would be. Comments please."

If you are IFR you cannot get more dire once the battery goes.

Heard that the water had run down onto the Racks and shorted out the GCU's therefore all generators would have been gone including the APU ones. Bet the crew earnt their wages for that period under standby power.

Here's how Steve Creedy and Michael West reported it for the Murdoch family press...

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/...014090,00.html

Ram Air Turbine
 

So what is the purpose of such a device? To help slow the aeroplane down??


What about an APU, to help speed the aeroplane up?

Sorry mate, No RAT on a 744.
APU GCU (Generator Control Unit) sits next to the other 4 GCU's and is also not waterproof. Even if the APU was running there would be no way to keep its 2 gens online.

Get ready for fleet wide and type wide inspections.