Can I ask if the sector had been operated in the other direction, i.e LHR-LAX. Would continuing still be the preferred option?

[difficult qu. to answer with out the facts...so please speculate!]

It's unlikely that the flight would have continued to LAX if the problem had occurred at the same time in the reverse direction. The Captain would have first call on the decision but in consultation with the company I'm pretty sure they would have returned to London.

The aircraft would have to be returned from LAX empty on a 3-engine ferry and the passengers booked on that flight would have to be rebooked elsewhere. Far easier to turn round, send the bust aircraft back to its engineering base, put the pax on another BA flight and save a stack of money in the process.

Also, the flight over the Rockies to LAX will involve flight over high ground and assuming (as we always do the) the worst case of a second engine failing, you might be poorly placed. So, best bet all round is to go home and try again.

No! The procedure is, ex main base to return.
The decision to carry on from 'down route' to home is only taken after careful consideration of the enroute wx etc and is taken after consultation with maintrol, and in the case of an engine failure with the propulsion engineers.

Woodpecker

You are splitting hairs, your statement is a gross simplification of the engineering decisions taken at the time.

We have had 2 B747 IFSD's over the last week, both aircraft continued long haul flights to destination without the passengers knowing!

Mutt.

gross simplification of the engineering decisions

Sounds like management speak to me!

Facts often do.

For what it's worth, as a professional pilot...
 

We have clearly reached a turning point, we now have more spotters than PPs on the board!

This tread would only be about 2 pages long if we could do without spoon feeding PC pilots, card holders and wannabes all the basics over and over and over again.

Pax safe?
Aircraft safe?

Hat off!

But what do I know? I'm only an airline captain with a Visa card. And it's blue.

m.mouseNah, not 'avin that.

You can get away with a lot on proon but that really is beyond the pale. Wash your keyboard out with soap and water.;)

Nice thread this. The headlines in the press when the facts come out in the open will be a leadwriters dream!!:yuk:

Someone somewhere will get a reaming for this event and the main culprits (the beancounters) will as usual walk away scot free.:mad:

By the way baengman, you are either very brave or very stupid considering the current climate within BA Engineering, MAN.:hmm:

You mean like in today's Daily Excess?: Paraphrasing ('cos I don't have it in the house - who would?):
"Terror as 747 runs out of fuel at 30,000ft" :yuk: :yuk: :yuk:

Interesting thread.

I have no problem with a big 4-jet continuing following an engine loss, as long as there were no other systems failures which would significantly affect the operation. It's an accepted practice and that is what would appear to be the case in this instance.

If the aircraft was forced to accept a lower level by Oceanic, (and that does happen quite a lot), that could affect the fuel burn and one would hope that the crew re-planned accordingly. The arrival at MAN with just 5 tonnes does beg the question as to whether this re-plan was effective, or were there other factors involved.

The knowledge that 3t out of the 5t was unusable is very disconcerting. The 747 drinks fuel at a prodigious rate at low level and I would imagine that there was a certain amount of uneasiness on the flight deck.

It would be interesting to know the route the a/c took (presumably northern or polar), and whether diversions to KEF, GLA or similar were considered.

I arrived at LGW a few years back in a 330 with 12t and diverted to MAN due to extreme winds across southern England. It was a direct diversion from 26L to 24 with no delays and I shut down at MAN with 4t. That's on a reasonably economical twin - you can imagine how quick the remaining three 747 donkeys were drinking the fuel in this recent incident.

Are the AAIB involved at all? I suspect not as there were no damage or injuries. Will the occurrence be investigated in-house or on a wider stage? It seems to me that a long accident chain was put in place and only broken at the last moment.

Finally, I personally support any spotter's right to contribute to pprune, and am disappointed by some of the disparaging remarks on this thread - it portrays us (professional) pilots as snooty, aloof, arrogant armholes. Give them a break - they follow aviation closely and would probably give everything to be able to fly as a profession.

It seems to me there are a lot of people making unqualified assumptions on this topic! Why not wait for the official word and quit speculating. Im sure the flight crew have been fully debriefed and had good reason for the decisions taken at the time. The aircraft landed safely and Im sure lessons have been learnt. Why not wait until they are published??:ok:

landing a 744 with 5 tons and some of it not usable is basically landing on fumes.....

This is not BA bashing. Could have been any carrier. Accident investigations more often than not reveal not one single cause but a series of contributory factors. The very fact that this thread exists is because, by following company SOPs, what the crew believed to be a relatively safe operation (as so many of you go to great pains to point out) was compromised as they found themselves facing additional problems as the flight progressed. It all ended well but, let's be honest, not according to the SOP script. Don't let SOPs fool you into complacency. They're not infallible.

Newt - I agree.
Who is investigating and where will the findings be published? It should be interesting reading.

If it is true, that the BA flight landed with a total of 5 tons remaining fuel onboard, of whitch only 2 tons was usable, I certainly see why the crew stated, that a go around was ruled out.

As far as I remember, we used 200KG/MIN as a rough figure for FF in landing configuration on the -400.

Landing with less than 10 tons of fuel onboard would trigger a voyage report as well!

The decision to continue the flight on three engines, given the very few "facts" available so far, sounds safe, and completely in line with SOP
s for that A/C type, however landing with 2 tons usable fuel, could/should have concerned the crew prior MAN.

Bearcat - exactly my thoughts!

Interjecting with my area of expertise, modern broadcast media have dictated that reality is inconsequential and perception is everything.

BA is currently perceived as the ultimate in safe air travel, perhaps even more so outside of its home market.

This could change, and could change very rapidly. You may consider this not to be based on reality (SOPs, 3-engine ops, ETOPs arguments etc.) but, as I've stated, this won't matter in the final outcome.

Personally, and this is based on reality, I would step onto a BA operated aeroplane without hesitation, and before any other airline in the world.

But the public who keep the airline afloat may begin to think differently.

It would be worth for a bean-counter to commoditise the value of negative reporting vs. the value of a return to LAX (e.g. in this case). They might be surprised at the answer....

I feel a bit strange, if I read statements by my fellow collegues that in their books the Pilots (or Company) did the right decision to PRESS on. Hey, the aircraft landed safely, the passengers were safe, so what is the big deal? Yes, the aircraft landed, the nobody was hurt. But the fact that this aircraft landed without having enough fuel for a G/A should speak for itself.

Incidents and Accidents are merely a caused by only one problem or technical faults, etc. It involves usually a chain of events. In my opinion the crew (or Company) did a very poor decision, by setting the risk level to a significant higher notch. And obviously they very caught by different (to the planned) wind conditions and ATC.

And an IFSD just after TO is a different story than one somewhere halfway to the destination.

:rolleyes:

I would bet that if they had gotten to the stage of tanks 1, 3 and 4 dry, then the tank 2 normal pump would have started feeding - It happens from time to time that one of the pumps gives slightly less pressure than the others, and takes a while to start feeding (according to the fuel synoptic), even in the 4 engine case.

5t is therefore not too much of a drama (following a diversion).

However, in my book it would be quite a bold decision to continue across the very cold and remote bits of the atlantic on three.

It has taken to Page 7 of this thread before we appear to have reached a consensus amongst the "professionals" that this could have developed into an accident and that landing with so little fuel needs some explaining.

Can anybody say how much fuel would have been needed to continue to Heathrow, plus the allowances for holding and diversion and still leave the company minimum landing fuel?

Was the fuel REALLY unusable?
 

As Jack's a dull boy says, when the fuel pumps for the remaining engines became uncovered, the 3.2 tonnes of fuel in the failed engine's tank would be pumped to it (assuming no further failure).

My money says that they got the FUEL QTY LOW message which comes on when any main tank gets to 900kg or less. This would have been at 3.2 + (0.9 x 3) = 5.9 tonnes (assuming fuel is perfectly balanced in the remaing three engines).

Upon getting this message they will have actioned the checklist. It includes instructions to land at the nearest suitable airfield, and to avoid high nose up attitudes and/or excessive accelerations. This would explain the Mayday and the statement that they are not going to go around.

Upon landing, with 5 tonnes remaining, the fuel synoptic would have 3.2 T in the failed engine and 0.6 T in each of the others. The 3.2 T is still useable, it is just that it's pumps are as strong as the other engines', and so it will only overide them when one of them stops working (ie the fuel becomes uncovered). This would explain baengman's comments about unuseable fuel. I do not believe the fuel was unusable, and I do not believe that the pilots would have been in a position to know that yet anyway, short of turning off all pumps on one of the working engines to see if the fuel transferred, and there are not many people that would have the balls to do that, suction feed or no suction feed!

As for those passengers on here who are worried about the safety implications of the decisions made. A Jumbo can taxy out, takeoff and do a 'no decision height' auto land on just three engines. There are lots of redundancies built into the aircraft, and the extra engine is just one of them. If one of the remaining three engines fails, the aircraft usually has to decend due to the reduced performance, but this is just the same on a two engined aircraft too. On two engines, more fuel is burnt than even on three, but it is policy to ensure that if at any point a second engine fails, there is still fuel enough to get to an airfield and land.

We do not play games and take risks of this nature. We have your lives in our hands, and we also have our own to concider too. We are a well trained profession and give nothing but our best to ensure you safety.

Did anybody consider what would have been the fate of the expedition if in the middle of nothing (the Decision point) they would have experienced a second engine failure? If they hardly made it, with the fuel, on three!? I've always been recommended not to enter into a funnel; never leave runway in the back, fuel on the ground and sky over the head. Why renounce (if not for safety reason) to the extra engine we always have on board?

Because an overweight landing may be far more dangerous!

Doves, if they had had a second engine failure at decision point, it would not have been wise to go around anyway. The 747 cannot go around on two engines after flap 20 has been selected.

As I say in my post above, which you might have missed because I have only just posted it, the decision about not going around was based on the checklist they were probably following at that time. In actual fact, had any of the pumps become uncovered, the fuel from the failed engine would have been pumped to that tank.

The best way to ensure 100% safety onboard an aircraft is not to get on it at all. But people do because the risk is low enough that we accept it. The same is true of flying on three engines - provided the fuel and terrain etc, are carefully assessed.

Bahrainlad, i think the point you make is spot on, perception of how a company operates must come top of the list of pasenger preferences.

One wonders if this had not be BA but a less prestigious airline would we be saying the same thing. The ....."Its BA so must be OK"....way of thinking still seems to prevail in the industry for no logical reason.

I've been in the business for over 30 years and have spent all my time flying Mr Boeings jets, 707,737,757,767 and one thing I have learnt over the years is that any non normal situation invariably gets worse through unforseen problems.

BA's SOP's seem a little strange to me, they have as stated a 3 engine ferry procedure for positioning sick aircraft to a maintenance base from an outstation or diversion airfield but have a different procedure for positioning an aircraft once airborne. It doesn't make sense after all how many passengers would voluntarily buy a ticket for a 3 engine ferry flight accross the Atlantic.

The correct procedure in this case was to dump fuel land back in Lax and ferry the aircraft to the nearest maintenance facility.

I'm not criticising the crew they were complying with their SOP and direction from maintrol, they just found themselves in a non normal situation that got steadily worse.(surprise, surprise)

This procedure is based on beancounter mentality and so it will be perceived by the paying passengers, there is no case for carrying out a 3 engine ferry flight accross the Atlantic with a full load of passengers.

Wake up BA your crew were nearly put in the position of a more famous Concorde Captain for no justifiable reason.

AB

Thanks GS-Alpha for the most precise description of events and consequences so far. Having flown the B737, B757 & B767 and just finished B744 ground school and therefore at the point where I can only forget more than I learn, I can now ask that the hand wringing posts by SLF with their insistence that they be informed of every decision made on the flight deck whether there is anything they can do about it or not, desist. The same goes for others who are not privvy to the precise details of everything we do at the front end.

Whilst many of the enthusiasts and pax who post on here with valid questions are welcome, there comes a point, usually after someone with good knowledge of the daily operation of the aircraft type in question explains in undramatic fashion of the real sequence of events and considerations taken by a professional crew, when the comments by the non-pilots of the type are not necessary and only serve to infuriate those of us with lower tolerance thresholds. Trying to make points about fuel burns and procedures with other types of a/c or worse, comparing what someone might know about PC Flight Sims and the real world or demands by a pax with no real knowledge of what really goes on at the pointy end that the crew should have returned to the airport of departure onle serves to wind many others up and are little more than trying to point score and a waste of time and space on here.

It's bad enough that the likes of the Daily Mail pick up on the story here and then insert the word 'Terror' to their headline without having to deal with the infuriated non-pilots over the crews decisions on how to deal with the problem. Please, ask questions by all means but please think very carefully about dictating what you think they should have done.

Thanks Danny,

Would just like to point out that this is what I think might have happened given the info I have seen posted on here. It is not a description of the events though, as I have no inside information. It is simply an account of what would happen in a normal engine failure scenario.

I think there is some misunderstanding on probability going on here.

This is simply untrue.

Say the odds of loosing any particular engine are 1 in 100 (far too high I know but it make the maths easier)

The odds of loosing one engine out of four are therefore 4 x 1/100 = 4%

Now take the case of taking off then loosing one engine, now the other 3 engines don't know that 1 has already gone, so the odds of any particular one out of the three left shutting down are unchanged at 1/100. There are only 3 left so the odds of another shutting down are 3 x 1/100 = 3%

However we have not considered the common cause problem, this is an interesting case because the odds on IFSD depend on two catagories of events.
1.) problems peculiar to that particular engine
2.) problems that affect all four engines (fuel supply, bad maintenance etc.)

So the reduction of odds from 4% to 3% for another engine only applies if the issue effecting the shut down engine does not apply to the other 3. The is difficult to ascertain. I do not have the data, but would suggest that a second failure is in fact at least as likely as a first failure ONCE THE FIRST HAS HAPPENED.

This is known as conditional probabilty.

If you have trouble with getting your head round this, think of the case of tossing a coin.

What are the chances of getting 1 tail = 1/2
What are the chance of getting 2 tails - 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4

BUT

Given that you have just tossed the coin and gotten a tail, what are the chances of getting another one = 1/2

In summary :-
Before you set off the odds of one IFSD are 4/100 = 4%
Before you set off 2 IFSD are extremly unlikey 4/100 X 3/100 = 12/10000 = 0.12%
BUT once you have had one IFSD the odds of a second are now just that 3/100 = 3%

With the rider that there may be a common cause which can only increase that 3% chance.


Remembering 3 things -
1.)To make maths easy I have used 1/100 for engine failure chances THIS IS FAR TOO HIGH.

2.) There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3.) I know something about maths, I know virtually nothing about flying anything bigger than a C172, and, I don't have an opinion about whether the crew did the right thing or not as I am not in position to evaluate the odds of any failure cases and the ramifications of them. Happy to leave it to the chaps and chapesses up front to get me to the snow.

Paul, you seem to know what you are talking about here, so I think you will agree that:

would actually be the chances of two totally unrelated IFSDs? Your previous argument about related shut downs would add another term to the expression, but I like your thinking in trying to calm down some of the concerned readers here...

:ok:

GS-Alpha,
Absolutly correct, I didn't try to quantify what the odds would be for related shut downs, just mentioned that they can only make the odds of an IFSD go up, because any term added to the expression cannot be less than 0.

But some people have trouble with the fact that just because something is unlikely to happen, if it happens anyway it doesn't REDUCE the chances of it happening again.

If shutting down one made a second IFSD a lot less likely, you'd just take off then immediatly shut one down, because "a second shut down is very unlikely" complete tosh of course.

Albert Ball Why is less risky to land back at LAX rather than continue say, to PHX? Or perhaps JFK? Easier surely to continue with a non normal situation rather than add to the problems by dumping fuel? Why not burn the fuel off getting closer to destination or home base, rather than chuck it out of the back and land back where you departed? The risks have been assessed by the FAA/JAA and found to be negligible.

It seems to me that people are asking the wrong question. The question should not be "should they have returned to LAX" because clearly the answer is NO. As a number of experts have indicated there is no problem continuing a flight on 3 engines with this aircraft. Surely we should be asking at what point the crew could have known that they would only have 5t of fuel by MAN and if they should have spotted this earlier and diverted to SNN.

Sky Wave,

Five tonnes of fuel by Manchester is not a particular problem. Two tonnes by Manchester would have been a problem, and this is the quantity that people are talking about. However, as I have pointed out, it is very unlikely that they only had two tonnes of usable fuel by Manchester. They would have been choosing to go to Manchester rather than Heathrow, because if they had continued, then they would have been dangerously short of fuel - at Manchester they were not.

They could have declared Mayday for many reasons. One would be a definite fuel shortage, and this is the one that everyone has pounced on. Another could have been as I have said, that they were following a drill that says "land at nearest suitable airfiled". They would have already been going to Manchester anyway, but just to make sure they did not have to go around, they would declare the Mayday too. (Just following the QRH FUEL QTY LOW drill).

THERE ARE NO QUESTIONS TO ASK AT THIS POINT, and so ALL questions are the wrong questions. You can be sure that the pilot managers in BA are asking all of the right questions, and if there is anything to be learned from the incident, will pass it on to the pilot community. However, as I say, this is very likely to have been a straight forward non-normal procedure, carried out professionlly and safely.

I am going to retire from this thread now because I think I have explained everything as well as I can.

GS-Alpha

Thanks for tkaing the time to give opinion and also the underlying logic of your thinking.

As a FQTV, I don't second guess the flight crew (I wouldn't like it if they told me how to do my job!), but the insight that you have provided is both interesting and reassuring, in the event that I am on a 744 that requires an IFSD.

Thanks for the response GS. I was under the impression that people were saying that 5t is basically fumes for a 744. I've seen these threads get sensationalised by people who don't know what they are talking about before and have no wish to go down that line. If you're telling me that 5t is no drama then I completely agree that there are no further questions to ask. I've also seen a lot of threads where ATC have stated that they will not give priority to anyone who declares a fuel emergency since no such situation exists in their book. Therefore the crew would have had to declare a PAN or a MAYDAY in order to be certain of a priority arrival.

Something seems fundamentally wrong with what occured here, whether it be because of the operator's SOP or the commander's decision is irrelevant.

In my humble opinion, sure, a 747 CAN fly safely on less than 4 engines, BUT, if one has failed (with 20 feet of flame coming out the back), then SURELY the aircraft MUST return back to the closest airfield as soon as possible if it can (even if it means dumping fuel first - how dangerous is THAT really anyway?).

If the engine failed out over the Atlantic then sure, you have no choice but to press on and hope for the best (LUCKILY you have 3 more engines still), but when it is totally OBVIOUS that something is badly wrong (you had to shut down 1 engine) and you cannot be ABSOLUTELY sure what else might be affected because of it, and you are still close to an airport - get down and see what the problem is and maxmimize safety - you DO NOT just "press on" unless you absolutely have to (such as if it occurred over the Atlantic), surely?

How can it be assumed that because 1 engine failed in flight it is still safe to fly on 3 engines out over the Atlantic? This sounds like total rubbish to me, because you CANNOT possibly know exactly WHY the engine failed and if that reason could possibly cause FURTHER engine failures. You are close to an airport, therefore get down ASAP and maximize safety - do NOT press on - you are not being FORCED to press on. Period.

Happens out over the Atlantic, sure, "press on" - (you have no choice anyway, do you now?)

barryt- you really don't know what you are talking about.
This thread has been totally hijacked by people who know nothing saying how it should be. Apart from saying I think my reaction (speaking as a 17 year 747 veteran) would have been exactly the same as this crews. I know what is safe- remember the pilots are also on board that aeroplane and have mortgages and children and no desire to hazard themselves in any way. They followed the book. The book is correct. Would aviation ignoramuses please stop sounding off what their opinion of 'safe' practice is!

I know I said I would not add anymore but barryt has a point in a way. However, would you also say that we should not take off with one pack failed, because redundancy has been reduced? The CAA, JAA, or whatever governing body you care to mention, has assessed the risk and decided that it is OK to depart with certain systems degraded. Similarly, they have assessed that it is safe to continue a flight with one engine shut down. Maybe we should never fly more than gliding distance from an airfield, because at any point, all 4 engines might stop working? Where do you draw the line? When we concider whether to continue or not, we ASSUME that another engine IS going to fail. We then assess this situation across the entire journey, and check that we can still get to an airfield and land safely. If this is not possible for even a 5 mile stretch of the journey, then we turn back, or land at an airfield at some point before that 5 mile stretch.

I would suggest that most people give themselves a buffer on top of their calculations too. That is why this partcular crew would have gone for Manchester rather than Heathrow. JUST TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE.

Rainbow : - No sir.

I have the greatest sympathy for the commander and yourself. I have a deep suspicion that the "book" here is incorrect.
Common sense tells me you must always choose the path of least risk given a "situation". You certainly DO NOT take further risks to safety. As a paying passenger I expect the "book" and my commander to always take the path with least risk to my safety.

You say you know what "safe is". How could you in this situation be 100% sure that it was ABSOLUTELY SAFE to press on and that what caused the engine to fail will DEFINATELY NOT cause more engines to fail.

Sure, the aircraft has a number of redundant systems, which are there for all of us to PREVENT the aircraft as much as possible from falling out of the sky instantly.

They are BACKUP mechanisms Rainbow. They SHOULD NOT be relied upon as if "nothing was wrong and all is safe" when something goes wrong.

Even WITH all the redundant systems, there could STILL have been something which caused this engine to fail and which was OUTSIDE of a redundant system. Admittedly, the chances are quite small, but still POSSIBLE.

I do not expect the operator to (I hate to use the word "force") the commander to take further risks on my behalf to potentially increase their fiscal "bottom line".

Once again, I have the greatest sympathy for the commander, as I have a sneaky suspicion he would more than likely have preferred to get back to LAX instead of pressing on, but chose not to because the "book" said it was OK, and he might have some serious explaining to do when he got back with possible negative ramifications from his employer.

In this day and age it just seems to me that often company profitability becomes more important than people's lives even.

Bit of a grey area I think, in that (like you say), this poor commander must remember he also has a mortgage and kids etc which he can't easily risk...

barryt- you know nothing- you appear to consider yourself an expert on B747 emergency/backup systems. Please read Danny's post at the top of this page again and try and understand it. Why do people who know nothing start trying to dictate what correct aviation practice is? It is getting appalling that any 'incident' gets picked over judiciously by aviation neanderthals who knowing hardly anything about this business suddenly start dictating what accepted practice should be. If you know nothing, keep your peace and let the authorities handle the outcome. If there are recommendations to be made, let the experts make them, not 'shoot from the hip' instant opinions from a plethora of people who don't know a bean! I'm getting very fed up with spectators here using Pprune R & N to hold unofficial 'court martials' after any aviation event- before even the full news is out.