BA 777 returned to LHR with gear trouble
 

Thursday 10th June at 2105 a British Airways 777 landed back at LHR after a 40 minute flight following a take off with smoke coming from undercarriage. Plane was met on taxiway by emergency services with slightly smoking brakes despite using reverse thrust and after a few minutes taxied slowly back to T4.

Similar undercarriage problems with one of the MXP A320s today too...

B772-BAW153-EGLL-FVHA

Aircraft departed approx 2015L with what appeared to be a thick "smoke" trail. Pilot reported no abnormal indications and elected to continue the SID. Many pilots on the ground reported the trail and a strong smell of fuel. Gatwick tower also reoprted the trail as did pilots in the air.

2025L Pilot still with no abnormal indications elected to return to EGLL after dumping fuel.

2110L aircraft lands 27L and was met by the Fire Service. Fire Service report possible smoke from main gear. Closer inspection shows small amount of smoke/vapour from 1 oleo. Pilot still with no abnormal indication was informed by Fire Service that they had recieved multiple calls from the public ref the "smoke". Aircraft then taxied to stand.

Full Emergency Over

Oleo's don't produce smoke and vapour?
Where did the airborne smoke trail and the smell of fuel come from?

Why would Gatwick tower report the smoke trail if the a/c departed from EGLL....?

Nineiron : only quoting the fire service

opsjockey: aircraft was vectored near gatwick, with clear skies, they were asked to observe.

Nothing too unusual from a bit of smoke coming from the brakes after landing with an aircraft fitted with Carbon brakes. Seen it loads of times especially A320's without brake cooling fans.
I would expect it from a return after a fuel dump as the Crew would probably get it down to around the safe Max landing weight & return ASAP, so perhaps a touch more wheel braking than usual.:)

if it was dumping perhaps some people observed the trail of fuel vapour and put the cart before the horse...

Quite possible & Smelt the JET A-1 as mentioned, Overstress :)

mmmmm, not unusual to smell fuel behind a jet when the wind is blowing in the right direction on the runway, but since he wouldn,t have started dumping fuel there I doubt the significance of this, what went wrong is not as important to me as how he delt with it once it had.

Anyone know if he left the gear down when told of the smoke ?

Well Done Airline Tycoon for some factual info on the B777 returning into Heathrow last night.

Just a few more points.

the aircraft was seen to get airborne with smoke from the location of the left main gear. This which was darker then the normal fuel colour when associated with venting. This was visible for about 10 to 15 mins as the aircraft flew south.

A runway inspection confirmed the extreme smell of fuel although no residue fuel was present on the surface apart from at SB1 where the aircraft was waiting prior to departure.

Reports were arriving all the time , not only from staff and flight crews at Heathrow but members of the public and although the flight crew initially had no abnormal indications BA were concerned enough to return the aircraft. After a short amount of time dumping fuel the aircraft returned on a Full emergency. A small amount of smoke was seen from the left main gear on vacating the runway but this was down to fuel contamination of the brakes.
Once on stand the undercarriage doors were lowered and the left side was totally smothered in fuel. Further investigations were taking place as initially the leak could not be found.

Intersting point of note . What would have happened if this had been in darkness ?? There would have not been any visible sightings from the ground !!!



:ok:

A fuel leak on to a hot brake and the gear retracted after take off. Tell me this isn't happenning, this is serious stuff.

Nineiron - you are in danger of taking this thread off into yet another Pprune jungle where wild and unsubstantiated comments will degrade the value of a 'news item'.

Three assumptions you (appear) to be making/hinting at:-

1) The gear was retracted after take-off - do you KNOW that?

2) The crew knew about the smoke/???/fuel leak at the point where gear is normally retracted - ditto ditto!

3) The cause was a fuel leak - ditto ditto ditto

Can I plead for a little more FACT and less SUPPOSITION from all?

Boeing aircraft are all fitted with fire detectors within the landing gear bay so that if there is a fire (most likely hydraulic fluid spill on hot brake) then the captain can lower the gear.

So in this case the crew should have been alerted to the problem even if it was night

And two weeks off and counselling for the darlings down the back

NN

I was landing on 27R as this aircraft climbed away from 27l. It had a very clear trail of what looked rather like smoke from the left side of the aircraft. The FO commented that it looked as if they were on fire...

Perhaps 30 secoonds after it was airborne there were reports on the ground from other aircraft of a strong smell of fuel. It seems likely the gear would be up as without any indications the crew would have retracted the gear normally after getting airborne. As someone has said a fire would have led to the gear being dropped again.

Looked dramatic but by the sound of things was not. Happily...

Regards

D

I can confirm that the gear was retracted as normal after take off as I watched it depart from where I was working.

It was not possible to tell precisely where smoke was coming from or whether it was leaking fuel or not. I did notice the disc brakes glowing red during the roll out though!

When you say the discs were glowing red was it just one brake or more?

If there was a dragging brake before take off you'd have thought the crew would have had visibility of this (brake hotter than the others) on the brake temperature page.

I'm thinking that this whole issue was likely fuel on hot brakes after taxi-out rather than a dragging brake, as I'm sure the crew would not have begun take-off if they suspected a brake(s) to be dragging

nigel......don't think there was any need for a comment like that!

Cheery

I'll decide what comments I'll make thank you very much.

Oh and its true. They milk it for all its worth to get maximum time off. Its a fact of life in BA.

NN

It was NOT a fire or overheat of any description.
It was NOT an undercarriage fault of any description.
It WAS a fuel leak from the CWT.
The aircraft is serviceable and due to fly today!

I witnessed the above event whilst driving around the perry track on my way home. I called the tower to advise what i had seen.

It was difficult to ascertain whether it was vapour or smoke but it seemed to be coming from the centreline of the aircraft and not an engine.
The gear was raised at the normal time and the aircraft seem to continue with a MID or SAM SID (which led me to believe it had not been noticed).

LHR tower advised me that they were aware of the situation.

All initial actions were indicative of the crew not being aware of the situation.

The gear page is not displayed for T/O, a taxi from T4 to 27L is very short and I would not expect the brakes to get very hot in that short a distance. The Eicas caution comes up around 5 units (I think) which is equivalent to an RTO at 120 knots at max weight, so probably unlikely to come up during a T/O.

shafted@work ...Generally in BA we brief that we will fly the SID while we deal with any emergency...that way it reduces the number of balls in the air at any one time.... Makes sense to me.

maxy101

Quite agree, just be sure the performance calculations are based on the sid and not in accordance with perf A. We now have SOP of straight ahead to 1500 agl as that is what is guaranteed through our perf calculations (assuming a perf related failure of course- which it would seem this was not).

cheers

Would the cabin crew have been given a back to back payment
plus an unpopular destination payment(who wants to go to
LHR as a destination).

Just to put this to bed - I have just flown the aircraft in question ('MME) and all the details of the fault and rectification were in the tech log. It is now fully servicable and from what I have read the incident appears to have been handled well.

If we want to use up a bit more bandwidth picking over the bones then fine -but with luck this "Airdisaster that never was" can slowly fade................

ETOPS - thanks for the update and tidying up the loose ends.

But what about the poor Cabin Crew involved, I hope they did get counselling upon arrival and were not expected to operate for at least 28 days!:hmm:

surely any distress caused to Cabin Crew during Emergency procedures, is fully analyzed and understood, and procedures in place that command the support of everyone involved?

"And two weeks off and counselling for the darlings down the back"


"But what about the poor Cabin Crew involved, I hope they did get counselling upon arrival and were not expected to operate for at least 28 days!"

these remarks seem a little harsh?

Depends whether an RTO ~80K for 1 cockpit indication, and return to stand, or an uneventful Go-Around, count as "Emergency Procedures".

To a few of our Senior CC, and their Management, they seem to. After the above events the CC have stated they were "distressed" and needed time to recover, and all sent home for a few days.

I must stress, only a few, and invariably led by one or 2 "ringleaders", and backed up 100% by a weak and over PC management. The FC of course are only asked "will you run out of discretion by the time we re-crew the sector?". Oh and of course the passengers, who have a genuine cause to feel a little stressed are the losers...

NoD

thanks for that NoD ...... there's obviously some "background" that I wasn't familiar with

cheers .....

dungfunnel,

You will have to explain that post!

Hope you offered to buy her a drink first???
Fingers crossed it's not a hard landing:eek: (Won't even mention the wind component - Oops, I just did)

PHX

It won't be fading away to the BAMC boys n girls who missed an inspection after maintenance will it?

This could have been very, very dramatic if the brakes had been hot!
The poster who said he saw the brakes glowing red hot is mistaken.

There for the grace of...............:hmm:

Some very poor taste comments from "professional's"!!

And you'll all never have made a mistake?

I'm not sticking up for anyone here, I am fortunate to know more fact than fiction, and this is a very serious incident that as far as I know is still under investigation.

We should all be reminded by this that vigilance throughout any airline op's, crew, eng etc must be maintained to stop things like this happening in the first place....Yes?

Keep to the facts, and cut out the "disaster" B.S, try and learn from these incidents instead, then hopefully they'll never happen and if they do, everyone takes note and it doesn't happen again.

Eng :ok:

Dude~

Plane was met on taxiway by emergency services with slightly smoking brakes despite using reverse thrust and after a few minutes taxied slowly back to T4.

Good performance of the crew and all supporting systems.

This incident just shows that not everything is covered by EICAS annunciated checklist do exist.

If Iemember correctly, a B777 landed last year in Danang with a fuel leak.

Crew suspected brake and possibly some other problems and decelerated basically on reverse only, good show.

certainly not fading here at BAMC I can tell you...

BA 777 incident at LHR?
 

BA 777 incident at LHR?

Just reported on BBC news that a triple seven departing LHR was seen to have 'smoke' trailing it on departure -associated with a strong smell of Jet A1. Pilots decided a fuel leak was occurring and returned to LHR after dumping 900,000 kgs (?!) (now corrected to 90,000kgs) of fuel. Fuel panel hatch (their description) found loose with securing screws found in attached plastic bag.

When was this?

(edited to acknowledge correction in reporting)

I would say 900 tonnes of fuel was a sign of someone not doing their homework properly. :hmm:

Happened in June, BBC was referring to AAIB report from a couple of days ago

AAIB Special bulletin