kontrolor

In light of recent BA incident (electrical power loss after departure and continuation of flight to destination), and this is a question for pilots here - would you comply to directive from company to continue after an incident like this, or would you rather land, despite bringing extra cost to the airline?

I would rather see that you bring the plane down, and that your company gives me a glass of drink or even lunch and delay me for 10 hours, than to put me on aircraft which is not so OK.

When I started flying 20 years ago, I was tought, that aircraft is servicable when all systems are nominal, not just the essential ones.

DISCOKID

As SLF I would rather the pilot make a decision himself based on his professional opinion and experience.

I would not want to be delayed 10 hours for something where the pilot (probably in conjunction with company engineering) believes it is completely safe to continue.

Sunfish

Drinks??, Delays?? Assuming that the failure was allowable under the MEL, I would have thought that failing to continue the flight would have been a career limiting move.

Or to put it another way: \"the warning light came on just after we took off\" as a certain Professional Pilot told me.

Skybloke

I think, if you put it into perspective, that the number of flights that are actually subject to "serious" system failures are relatively few - thank God. This is, from the sound of it, one of those few. Modern airliners are electic 'critical' and to have such a major interuption early on in the flight deserves a real close looking at. I applaud their decision to spend time diagnosing and eventually restoring most systems but having done so the "safe" decision, in my opinion, would be to land. At LHR they would have all the engineering support anyone could possibly want. Then try and find out what went wrong. The passenger inconvenience, in this particular case, is irrelevant. After all, we are not in the business of risk!

Finally, to answer the originator, if ALL systems had to be fully serviceable prior to departure then very few aircraft would ever get airborne. Your car, presumably, has nothing wrong with it? This is the purpose of the MEL.

Hope that helps.

Jetstream Rider

It is very difficult to judge incidents like the one above with the little information we have. If you have a failure and fix it, then the system is no longer failed. It all depends on the fix as to whether you carry on or not. For instance, if the fix is a five minute work around - then land. If it is complete restoration, without cause for further concern - continue. There are shades of grey inbetween. At first reading the incident above surprised me. With some reflection and thought, the crew may well have done the right thing. The truth is there somewhere, but we have far too little information to be able to judge.

The incident with coming across the Atlantic with 3 engines is another good example. The crew did the right and safe thing, in accordance with company approved SOP's, and many critiscised their descision.

In this world at the moment, there are too many armchair experts claiming they know what is going on and taking people to court all the time. In reality, we are generally a safe, hard working bunch of people and some of the descisions we have to make are very difficult. We do have passengers rights in our minds - and our own - and I know no one who would willingly do something stupid at the behest of the company. In fact quite the opposite, diversions to out of the way places wtill happen, despite the company having no facilities there, as it is simply the best descision at the time.

When we find out more about the Airbus incident, we can have more intelligent discussion.

soddim

Surely the safest reaction to every system failure is to work through the problem following best advice and procedure – if the aircraft is still flying safely and no other single failure will cause it to do otherwise, why not continue to destination?

If, on the other hand, there is no redundancy left – ie, one more system failure would be disastrous, then the only safe action is to land as soon as possible regardless of the cost to the company or inconvenience to the passengers.

kontrolor

I'm not talking about minor flaws, but like BA 747 departing on 3 engines, selecting to continue to destination after complete electrical failure...and such. I'm fully aware, that it is absurd to delay a flight due a light bulb malfunction, but where is the limit? which bulb will be the ONE factor, to give a go/no-go signal to the crew?

you must certanly agree, that complete electrical failure is not something minor...

pleiades

Not to state the obvious, but im currently studying for my MEIR in about two weeks and we have to know all the little fiddly (admittedly, New Zealand specific, but still ICAO) laws relating to electrical failures and stuff.

if you loose all electrical power you have to proceed with your flight plan as designated in the flight plan, go to destination, and perform approach as per your flight plan's ETA.

so by that, should you not just go ahead with it? surely if he lost ALL electrics then thats the only route. and if he had a partial failure, and the MEL allowed it, then good on him for keeping his job before thinking about little timmy in seat 15B who cant watch some new movie till he sees it in the cinema!

sorry, im ranting again.

blueloo

pleiades....what the? Maybe if you lose comms only.......

All aeroplanes have different systems and redundancies built in. Some models of jets when you lose your main electrics (both gens, and apu)- have maybe 30-60 mins standby power, for the standby A/Hs. Are you seriously saying that on a dark, gloomy, non- moonlit night, with a complete electrical failure (not in this case where power returned) you would press on to destination, knowing that in possibly 30 mins you may have no basic attitude instrument? (This is let alone no navigation instruments).

African Tech Rep

Pleiades – you got a link or extract from an ICAO doc that supports this ?

ICAO don’t actually set Laws – they set “Standards” (or Guidelines) – it’s the down to Country to write their laws IAW these Standards.

So it’s possible the ICAO have said something along the lines of “electrical power failure = pilots decision” and the NZ Govt have said “where possible the flight should continue to destination”, conversely another government may have said “unless 100% certain that fault will not reoccur divert to nearest airport” – both would be IAW ICAO standard – but both would result in different action.

One thing that may need to be taken into account is availability of a “suitable” airfield – along this guys route they would have been everywhere – in NZ they might not be as numerous.

Ropey Pilot

OK, lets not flame pleiades too much for adding his opinion.

Yes if you lose power and cannot communicate you are correct in saying that you should continue as per your flight plan since through busy airspace etc it is the only way for ATC to know what you are doing.

However you are neglecting the golden rule of aviate,navigate,communicate. Note: navigate comes second.

In my A/C a total electical failure (requiring the failure of 5 seperate generators -well 2 from each engine and and the APU) is very unlikely. But we don't deal with purely 'very unlikely' so we have to plan for it and the battery power following this will last for 40 mins if you shed all uneccesary loads (according to the book anyway I would be planning to land sooner than that!). After that you would have (as has been mentioned) no AI - or other quite important systems! Admittedly you would still have one radio, but in the spirit of pleiades post lets assume you have an unconnected comms failure...

In the spirit of aviating first I wouldn't contnue for the remaining hour of the flight hoping that continental Europe will suddenly become VMC despite what the forecast said!

Carnage Matey!

As this thread seems to be vaguely aimed at BA it should be stated quite clearly that BA do not issue 'directives' to continue flights. You may get advice from engineering on whether it is safe to continue, you may get information from Ops as to where they would prefer the aircraft to go, but they do not issue directives to continue flights.

1DC

I agree with the Disco Kid, as a frequent flyer who buys his tickets I plan a journey using airlines I trust to get me to my destination safely. Some airlines I will never use, I may be right in my judgement and I may be wrong, but that is my decision. When I have decided I put my trust in the airline and flight crew and if they decide to continue a flight or land that is okay with me..
BA is one of the many airlines on my trust list.....

Piltdown Man

When you get a problem with an aircraft, continuation of the flight may be possible. If it was a trivial one, you just continue, land and write it up in the book (if necessary) so that Maintainence have a record and the next crew who fly the machine are "warned". Given a "big" problem, you may still decide that continuing is still an option so you speak to your company and if they say "continue", you continue. If they say "return", you return. It's their train-set (and we are told, have a bigger picture than us). All the time when you have the aircraft, you always have the power of veto. Safety is never the problem in these cases - it's the protection of the schedules, both today's and tomorrow's. People have paid good money to fly safely from A to B at a certain time and that is, believe it or not, the service we try to deliver.

lowlimit

The question remains...was it a complete electrical failure? And how far did they fly after getting airbourne with this failure? I think we don't have enough information to make a good judgement call.

If it was a complete electrical failure, they more than likely would have returned to land. But since the original poster says they were in contact with Company I would have to presume they still had battery power or at least a RAT.

I could see completing the necessary checklists and swinging around for landing (after declaring an emergency). Oh...I don't know...maybe 15 - 20 minutes total from wheels up to landing.

Continuing with a failed generator is another story that obviously would allow them to choose the most APPROPRIATE destination.

What actually happened anyone know the details?

I think we always need to think that the only ones who really know what happened are the crew. We shouldn't judge unless we know ALL the details...and even then we should not pass to harsh a judgement.

groundbum

irregardless of what the failure was and whether the crew was right, I can see that this BA incident sensationlised in the media, along with the BA 3 engine from LAX also sensationalised in the media, could create a perception that BA suffer's from an acute case of push-on-itis and this may be "cowboy" behaviour.

I'm not saying this is true, and these are the facts and so on, but I am saying if I was a bigwig at BA I wouldn't want a few more of these engineering decisions to get out and fuel the fire. So I'd issue a note to engineering etc suggesting they veer a bit more back towards caution and return to base and so forth.

Not because it's technically justified, but because there's no need for bad publicity one after another. Once Joe Public's mind is set one way it would take years of non-news to eliminate the perception.

Simon

threegreenlights

If I have any problem that causes me to believe the safety of the aircraft is, or could be, in jeopardy I will:

1. Consult my F/O (for obvious reasons)
2. Land at the nearest available airport!

In this case I care not for regs, delays, money, inconvenience, kissing the kids goodnight, dates with a promise attached........

A full or even partial electrical failure is, in my view, a good reason to pan and land.

It is that simple!

Carnage Matey!

Well I wouldn't want to be flying with you when we get a single generator failure and have to make a wholly unnecessary diversion.

Not even close. The A320 uses an AC Essential Feed Bus to power the essential bits on the flight deck ie displays, standby AI, VHF1, Xponder1 etc. The essential bus is normally powered by AC bus 1, but can be manually switched to AC bus 2, and I think even the battery can power it via the emergency static inverter. It appears in this case that the link to AC1 failed, the flight deck went dark, the ECAM drills were actioned, which include switching the AC Ess feed to AC2 and the lights came back on again. Where is the big issue? There was no generator failure. There was no RAT deployment. There was no Emergency Electrical Configuration. The aircraft did pretty much as expected given the failure, with perhaps the exception of the VHF1 failure, and recovered pretty much as expected. The words mountains and molehills spring to mind here. Sure, lets have the AAIB investigate why some components which should have been powered were not, but the conspiritorial implications from some posters that the crew pressed on in an aircraft with seriously degraded performance due to commercial pressure is ludicrous.

DoNotFeed

After loosing a single bus there should be no more than half the screens blank.
We could say this would be some sort of redundancy we may expect in the world of aviation.
In this incident redundancy was built on VMC.
Strange World that day.
Are there still certifying bodies out there?

Unfortunately they leave us with lists of CB's to pull when dark.

happy landings

L337

BA does not direct a Captain. It is the Captains decison on the day. That is what he is paid to do.

After the event, if you make a dodgy decision you may be asked to account for that decision. Indeed the AIB might want to talk to you.

As the Captain the buck stops with you. The Captain is the legal commander. He makes the decisions.


ROFLMAO.

Yesterday I had a generator failure. Options were to go to Goose or Iqualuit. Both with blowing snow etc etc, Or follow the QRH and continue to destination. No fuss no problem. The passengers never knew, and the cabin crew never knew. Had I diverted, I would now be on the chief pilots carpet, trying to answer some difficult questions.

L337