QF72 incident may ground the A330-300
 

My fellow PPRuNe colleagues - you may remember on October 7 incident, on Qantas flight QF72 from Singapore to Perth, last year, passengers were hurled around the cabin after the Airbus A330 aircraft dropped with two plunges of 20 and 16 seconds 200 and 650 metres in a matter of seconds while flying over the Indian Ocean. The pilot was forced to make an emergency landing at Learmonth, 1200 kilometres north of Perth on the Western Australian coast, and 44 passengers required hospital treatment.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it believed a faulty component, called the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU), caused the problem by feeding "erroneous and spike values'' about the angle at which the plane was flying to a flight control computer.

"This led to several consequences, including false stall and over speed warnings,'' and later generated very high and incorrect values for the aircraft's angle of attack. This led to the flight control computers commanding the aircraft to pitch down.

On this flight the plane acted of its own accord even after the pilot had taken manual control of the aircraft but minutes later, the plane made two downward plunges.

This was a situation which nobody have seen it before.
During the incident the flight crew should get a message from ECAM (Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor) signaling the pilots which system is faulty and what to do to fix it.

The thing to remember about Airbus is the flight control computer is always flying the plane wether Auto pilot is on or not, even in manual mode all the controlling done through the flight control computer.
After the initial problem that led to the autopilot disconnecting, they were hand-flying the plane and then the aircraft pitched down by itself.
While they try to correct the situation it happened again ... it pitched down a second time.

After the incident they found one of the three Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU) was defective and it sent to the US base of its manufacturer, Northrop Grumman for to find out what led to the (fault) and reduce the chance of that happening in the future.

As far as it is known , this appears to be a unique event and Airbus has admitted that it is not aware of any similar event over the many years of operation of these type airplanes.

Qantas’s initial review of the aircraft's maintenance history found no problems.. A Qantas spokeswoman said 21 of the company's 217 aircraft were equipped with the component in question. "This is now clearly a manufacturer's issue and we will comply with the manufacturer's advice," she said. Airbus issued a bulletin to all operators of its planes containing the component, with advice on how to reduce the risk of a crash in the event of such a malfunction.The aim of the bulletin is to:update operators on the factors identified to date that led to the accident involving QF72,provide operational recommendations to mitigate risk in the event of a reoccurrence of the situation which occurred on QF72. In order to "minimize risk in the unlikely event of a similar occurrence" … an Operational Engineering Bulletin is on its way … Is it simply to emphasize the already published procedure or is it something new the QF72 crew could not have known before ?

Importance of reading the ECAM messages and manipulating the appropriate switches is shown once again in this incident.
The A330 and A340 have identical systems, in the world there are 182 A-340 and 210 A-330 airplanes are flying.

There had been suggestions the incident may lead to the grounding of this beleaguered aircraft.

What do you think ?

I Think that you're a troll who has no credibility on these threads...

Cheers mate,

DIVOSH!

No Grounding
 

Nope. No grounding because of that incident, but on-going analysis of systems involved - as is normal.

Jeez, get a hobby. One that doesn't involve posting some negative personal opinions about the A330 every couple of weeks. :rolleyes:

Smelley
 

I think I smell a reporter sniffing around looking to create another ****e story about QF. Or in the very least I smell a trouble maker looking to raise some more negative controversy about the Red Rat. Lame !

Yesterday a 757 made an emergency diversion to JFK after smoke entered the cabin. The very night before an Embraer (145 I think), made an emergency landing in Newark for very similar reasons. An A320 had a gear malfunction a few years ago and had to make an emergency landing in LAX. Later it was found quite a few A320's were found with similar problems. In a very famous incident at Heathrow, a B777 plunged shy of the threshold. The A340 has been in a few landing incidents. The A310 and B737 have had a fair share of rudder problems. The list of aviation incidents goes on and on and extends through to every single aircraft ever made.

Now why do we not assume that ALL these airplanes are 'beleaguered?' And as for your beleaguered,....oops I mean beloved 737, we could start a whole thread on 'interesting' past experiences. Having said that however, it still cannot be said that the 737 is an unsafe aircraft. In fact there really isn't a single modern airliner flying today which is considered unsafe.

I don't know why you still carry on presenting yourself as a pilot. It's really quite sad, especially since there is a wannabe section. However reading your poorly written post I am not quite sure that you are a media troll either. That is unless you work for one of the less well edited publications, which would explain where you have read all this publicity-stunt type information, which looses instant credibility with any plot reading it. You certainly aren't fooling anyone here so stop bull:mad:ing yourself.

All previous posts by flyboy737800 involve Airbus fishing!

PS... still no response from flyboy to this question posed during a previous fishing expedition! :E

Don't feed the troll!

"beleaguered" sounds like cliche school for journos, Lesson 1.

Okay, who forgot to tell me that the School Holidays had started? :=

Your post idicates you know less about the Airbus than you imply.

I think this thread should be locked pronto.

The question was -

"There had been suggestions the incident may lead to the grounding of this beleaguered aircraft. What do you think ? "

Gentlemen and Ladies - please confine your post to the subject and refrain from descending to personal attacks.

Flyboy737800

Nowt wrong with A330, great airplane to fly on as a SLF.

FLYBOY737800 PM me the name of your supplier. :ok:

Nice try mate, but you've been sussed out fairly well I would say. My bet is that you're a journo.:ugh:

Quit now whilst the decision to do so is still yours.

"My fellow PPRuNe colleagues" FlyBoy737800


I'm not your colleague because I'm not a journo so :mad:off!

Suggestions by who? State your source mate, or are you just making this up?

Ode to a Troll
 

This one is for you Flyboy.
Translated from an old Norse Poem. (courtesy of Wikepedia)

Ode to a Troll?

The post by Pinky the pilot pretty much sums up the general consensus about what most poster's feel about flyboy's comment.
However, there may be just a remote chance that flyboy does fly the big jets, on Microsoft. So i think two suggestions are in order here.
1) If you are a wannabe, go back to your computer flyboy and leave the aircraft related discussions to the experts.
2) If you are a Reporter ( which is the most likely scenario due to the style of slimy attempt at trying to extract input from the professionals) please go back to your Trailer and use Google to dig up your next ****e lined story. Journo's who muck rake aren't welcome on Prune.
Lastly, I may be completely wrong altogether, so if you can prove that you aren't a low-life Journo then I humbly apologize.

The ATSB has made no such statement, the final report has not been released, only an interim statement of fact. The Honeywell GNADIRU is installed on various types, it is not specific to the A330 or Airbus.

I think this thread should be deleted and that you banned under your various pseudonyms from pprune.

You are nothing but a trouble maker. With an attitude like yours, you would last only 5 seconds in any airline interview, we know you cannot be a real pilot, no one would employ your personality type.