Dreamliner preflight error, ground and tech crew?
 

On the evening of 21 September 2021, a Boeing Company 787-9, registered VH-ZNJ and operated by Qantas Airways was prepared for a freight flight from Melbourne, Victoria, to Los Angeles, United States. This involved removing covers from the pitot probes and static ports, among other tasks, associated with restoring the aircraft to flight status following an aircraft ‘park’ procedure.

At about 0825 on 22 September 2021, a pre-flight exterior inspection was conducted by one of the flight crew, with no anomalies detected. The aircraft was also subject to a pre-departure exterior inspection by ground service dispatch personnel, before departing Melbourne at about 0900. The aircraft landed at Los Angeles about 14.5 hours later, following an uneventful flight. During the post-flight inspection, engineering identified that all 4 engine fan cowl static ports were covered with tape.

Fascinating.

Bit like the Malaysian A330, engineer fails to remove items, however post that we do have multiple layers of responsibility from others to try and pickup on these issues post that. Do not rely on ground operators to pickup on these things, it's a bonus if they do, however I have seen a Captain fall into this situation before, who got into serious trouble from the training department when the ground crew reminded them about something that they failed to pickup during a preflight.

I don't believe the Roo has engineers dispatching flights from the stand anymore, however whoever conducted the preflight here, I assume SO, failed miserably.

I am sure our Boeing rated friends could advise us on why no engine warnings at all appeared? Strange.

Is it standard procedure to use that sort of tape?

According to the ATSB report (p.4):
https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/578122...-040-final.pdf

Yep, someone screwed up. Lucky it didn’t cause any hassles. Lucky no one was injured as a result.

Hopefully lessons learned.

Seems somewhat risky sending a second officer (not saying this one was, but I believe that’s pretty standard for QF WB)
I’m surprised so many captains accept this

you do realise most of these second officers are ex Captains themselves…

A 787-9 is flying freight?

Why? They’re type rated aren’t they?

There were a number of failures here, but the most obvious safety breach was whoever applied the tape in the first place without an accompanying maintenance snag requiring it to be removed before flight.

Sounds like a really fun place to work 🙄

We have checklists for most things, why not a check list for the walk around?

I think there is accumulating evidence for a slightly more detailed checklist than simply "Gear pins and covers?.........." Certainly probes and engine cowl locks could be added, based on recent incidents.

One would hope that any pilot member of a crew i.e. who is type-rated, would know how to do a walk around and what to check, no matter what their rank is.

Everybody makes mistakes, but forgetting to look to see if probes are uncovered and clear is surely not open to a pilot forgetting. How can one forget ? - it is the reason you are outside, walking around the aircraft.
Looking into the front of a fan engine, you look at the intake probes, right? As well as the condition of the intake housing, the spinner, the fan blades etc. Don't you ?

It would have set numerous FADEC maintenance faults and the "L/R ENG CONTROL" EICAS messages. However the ENG CONTROL messages are inhibited above 80 knots, so the crew would not have seen them until they landed, and we don't expect the flight crew to check CMC faults (I don't think there is anything that would prevent it, but unlikely there would be any reason for them to look).
Engine operation may have been a bit 'abnormal' - not up to speed on the Trent 1000 Air Data Logic, but the general rule is if both engine sensors agree but disagree with aircraft, the system defaults to the engine sensors to protect engine-to-engine isolation. Of course when engine sensed Pamb became greater than the P total, it likely would have faulted everything and gone to some default failsafe value.

We don't know that.
There may well have been a log entry to remove the tape, however, as happened in the other incident discussed recently, a communication breakdown between the certifying engineer and the delegated indivual who was tasked to remove the tape can easily happen.

A mechanic would not likely be near a storage aircraft. Never in my lifetime and storage aircraft have been fairly common. Oh, certifying means checking before signing. That simple. I did to another LAEs work yesterday as he didn't have company approvals. Guy was way more capable and experienced than myself but I still checked the work. Argue your way out of that statement of fact. We as engineers know that storage checklists are comprehensive in the scope and responsibilities.

Not sure why you want to start a fight over this, I was merely making the observation, as previously stated, that communication errors between individuals can occur. I am not condoning it, or making excuses. It doesn't matter how capable or experienced you are. Everyone, and I mean everyone is capable of erring.

Whatever the reason(s) for a mistake; the final arbiter is that one of the pilots - who is actually going to be in the aircraft, taking off - needs to check that important things such as probes have been individually looked at and checked.

The pilot walk-around should be the one that catches any mistakes such as probe covers being left on.