AAIB BA38 B777 Initial Report Update 23 January 2008

[ChristiaanJ]

Green-dot,

We've already been into EMI here before.
The one thing that mitigates against it IMO is that it was very much a one-off event in more than a million flights.
A pre-existing condition such as you describe would long since have shown up in an "EMI-rich" environment such as the average airport.

[wilyflier]

tat ,skin temps and wax

Please,
.....TAT-47 degrees ,83M
......Isnt TAT ( getting a bit near the margin) the temp in the stagnation area around the leading edge? Could skin temperatures further back be closer to OAT?

[Chris Scott]

Now that you have picked them up on this point, wilyflier, I want to agree with you. I seem to recall that the story was that - ultimately- the fuel temp would stabilise somewhere between TAT and SAT.

[virginpilot1087]

BA777 At Heathrow Report? Where is it

Just a thought, not read through all the BA thing from 23rd Jan as theres far too much info on people opinions but no actual evidence, but did they not say there would be an initial report and then another one 30 days later? if so 30 days came and went so where is it??

If I am mistaken then no worrys, but when is there likly to be more info?

[747-436]

I heard last week from a reliable source that the interim report is due out very soon. So perhaps we will see it next week.

[CONF iture]

M.Mouse, the only aim of the low temp fuel procedure described in here is to make sure that if a crew enters –50 in its computer, the 10 to 15% wing fuel with a higher FP that was already on board won’t wax in secret.

Question:
I understand that a faulty operation of the water scavenge jet pumps won’t give much advisory #209
Except from a good fuel page scanning, would we get any other signal if for any reason the fuel scavenge jet pumps cannot transfer the remaining 900 kg from center to main tanks ?

I'm still on the fuel but Green-dot is producing an interesting reading ...

[yamaha]

I can't keep quiet any longer. Put EMI to bed. Its nothing more than trying to inject a conspiracy theory into the whole tragic affair.

It reminds me of all the A320 scaremongering 20 years ago. Lightning will bring it down, power cables will bring it down, the computers will be hijacked by virus's.....all humbug.

How many aircraft fly each day and how much EMI is out there 24/7.
Please get real.

A more likely scenario.........

water draining is a legal requirement but takes time
flight schedules quite often deny maintenance that time
fuel draining is quite often not correctly performed (the small issue of allowing the fuel to settle is universally ignored)

therefore it was just a question of time. The only surprise being that it was a 777 and not an airbus which are very prone to water/fuel issues, so much so that it is a mandatory ETOPS check to drain fuel once a week.

[manrow]

therefore it was just a question of time. The only surprise being that it was a 777 and not an airbus which are very prone to water/fuel issues, so much so that it is a mandatory ETOPS check to drain fuel once a week.

Since science hasn't yet achieved burning water as a usable aviation fuel I feel sure that AT LEAST a weekly water drain check will become mandatory. We are pushing the boundaries of long flight times, short turnaround times to the point never envisaged.

[Man Flex]

Yes indeed. It begs the question, how much of the ten tonnes of liquid found in the tanks was actually fuel?

[NSEU]

However, naive question, how can you be sure that a single temperature gauge is not over-reading?

I thought that was what everyone seemed to be overlooking, too. A failure of a Fuel Temperature indicator is annunciated on EICAS, but I assume this is for a total failure or an out-of-limits failure. Last week, I changed an engine oil quantity probe for underreading by 5 quarts. There were no annuciations of failure. We only noticed it because we had just topped up the oil and the reading was still low.

[Feathers McGraw]

NSEU

At least the error was in the right direction, more worrying if it had been overreading and showed "at the peg" with no oil remaining.

[ba38pass]

Holding Time

Maybe I can help.

A poster asked how long the hold time was. I believe that it was about 10-12 minutes, based on the initial captain's announcement to the crew that it would be '20 minutes to landing'. I had checked the time at that point.

It definitely seemed to me that there was at least one circuit before coming in from the south to the approach with landing gear just after richmond as usual.

[Phil.Capron]

Quick question.Does anybody know if the crossfeed was left open by mistake b4 app?The crossfeed was found open was it not?