Well it is totally different! I think I would divert immediately if fuel was doing funny things in tanks, you'd already lost one engine, and a second engine started failing, with a second fuel tank showing empty! A serious incident definitely requiring the action taken. What we are talking about here is a simple engine failure with no external damage (these engines are covered by firewires in the cowling, so any breach of the structure of the engine would illuminate overheat or fire warnings. Ample protection, a simple engine failure. 3 left working healthily. No problem.

Blame Microsfot for the Virgin one!

"I think I would divert immediately if fuel was doing funny things in tanks, you'd already lost one engine, and a second engine started failing, with a second fuel tank showing empty!"

Well that's most reassuring.....

I've finally got p*****d off with the amateur replies on this thread.
BEagle , grow up.
Bye

Good bye to you to.

And to your personal insults...

Shame that irony is lost on you.

I think the expression irony does that too much honour maybe. I'd call it cheap shot. I was trying to respond to DOVES raising another incident that bears no similarity.

:Gentlemen, I tend to regard these pages as a bit of good old fun from which I, at least, have learnt a very great deal. I have monopolized many a dinner table conversation with my family, spouting another man's wisdom. Women are a trifle lacking in that respect. Whoopsie. 'Here we go, Dad's off again.' For the benefit of all your expert opinion I thank you. Actually, I know a thing or two myself.Please, cool the tempers a bit. PPrune is really just a bit of a laugh is it not?:p
I don't like Hyenas, although I have been called one in these pages. Jackass-well, that's getting a little close to the old beano bone. Lighten up. I suspect that Dove is Colomba, in Italian and that English is not his natural idiom. I think he does a far finer job of writing it than I do Italian. Let's hum something from Rigoletto.
What, Toodle Pip and Huzza.:E

cavortingcheetah, yes, thank you for exerting a stabilising influence. You are indeed correct.

Let's just summarise the salient points raise so far:

1. The 747 event was operated within the airline's SOPs.
2. Some consider that to be the end of the matter, others consider the Commander's actions to have been 'legal but imprudent'.
3. A school of thought considers that FAA regulations, had they applied, would have led to a different conclusion.
4. Some consider a 747-400 which has lost an engine at 100ft to be no different to a fully serviceable tri-jet. Others regard it as an a/c which has already experienced an emergency. Yet others take a stance between these extremes.
5. Because the type of engine used on this 747-400 is the same as is also used on the same company's 767-300 a/c, some view the frequency of such IFSDs on non-ETOPS a/c as prejudicial to the company's ETOPS culture.
6. Some take the view that there is excessive pressure to increase ETOPS time beyond the current limits. However, ETOPS was not an issue in the event under discussion.
7. '4 engines for long range operations?'
8. The Virgin Atlantic A340-600 event was caused by undetected mis-sequenced fuel transfer following fuel management computer failure. The AAIB has raised several safety recommendations to address the design of the a/c's fuel system, including an independent low fuel state warning device.

I do feel the "Personal Insults" thrown at Aviators of great standing have no place on PPRuNe .......

This really has turned out to be a very Sad thread :(

I decided this several years ago, everytime I see him on the television, hit the off button. Discused some time ago on Pprune.

from tv forum.co.uk: -
compressor stall: -
compressor stall.

I can't believe this thread has gone on for so long, seems to me there is a lot of uniformed opinion here interlaced by those who clearly thru flying the 744 for a number of years and have the experience, and those that have clearly been in this situation before and have given us a clear insight into the necessary actions that need to be taken when a 744 goes down to 3 engines.

Therefore I can't see why there is a need by individuals to stir, snipe and dig and quite frankly has turned what should have been and interesting, insightful and informative post into a complete joke.

The BA SOP is to get the plane back to base where it is safe to do so, those doing the flying have clearly worked out what is safe and what isn't and at no point during the flts in question was anyone in any danger......why can't it simply be left at that?

I wanted to release somethink like these:

To cavortingcheetah
I am shure that if you were me you'd answered:
'Look guy, my grand pà told me: "Let me make to that ill-bred grown up a proposal he cannot refuse". And I hardly calmed him down. So watch out! Be careful on what thou say!'
But I am not you. The difference between me and you is that I want to learn, also from other's errors, while you are so superb that you only spit sentences.

And to Rainboe: When you say:
"It's quite clear isn't it? Learn to like it baby- you will all be assimiliated one day!
Then Microsoft will run the world, and BA all the airline procedures, and you will all be happy again.
Now where was your confusion?"
Your opinion is perfectly clear.
But if you don't mind I'll never be assimilated.

But I won't. I'll refrain from any discussion.
I'm only waiting for a Superior Opinion to be released soon.
P.S. I am too a many decades, happy, subscriber of Flight International

I was trying to be funny!...........not very successful, was it? I was trying to say that if BA ran everybodies flight procedures like Microsoft runs the computer world..........oh well, never mind.

Actually, it does work very well you know (gunshot.............silence)

:) Doves.
I am a little concerned at your last post. I had absolutely no intention of being rude to you. Believe me, when I want to be, I will be.
So, let me assuage your wounded intelect and pour water on your injured pride. These forae are not for the faint hearted and we have certainly dirfted many miles from the original thread.
All I know now is that, if I am flying a big bird out of LAX and things go-Mama Mia-Bingo Bango then:
Turn right, fly across the desert wastelands of middle America, thence across the savage oceans of The Atlantic. Do not turn left and launch into the vacuous void of El Pacifico. Remember Cortes on the heights of Darien? In the meantime, I will continue to spit the sentences. It's a turn of phrase which I appreciate. Bravo! Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma, sort of thing, what!:E

:O Helli Girl.
Was that the ovine or the bovine?
Happy Easter:rolleyes:

Hi Rainboe.

Congratulations on managing to keep your fur on when so many others are losing theirs.

As a long time user at very close quarters of Microsoft products, and a more than occasional observer and experimenter on flight decks, all I shall say at the moment is that the day I see the Microsoft logo appearing on anything on an aircraft other than the In flight entertainment system will be the day I start to think very carefully about if I want to fly any more.

Given Microsoft's ability to produce code down to a price, that has to be released on a date regardless of the problems that users have reported during pre release testing, and that has to be patched and updated to the level that we see on an almost daily basis, there is no way that Microsoft products could ever be certified for mission critical applications such as aircraft flight deck applications.

[thread drift]Even simulators have their moments, a while back, when we were researching handling characteristics of one of the bus family, we rented a sim here in Europe to try and get some parameters for the project we were working on. No names, no secrets, let's just say that it became very clear after about 10 minutes of edge of the envelope handling that the simulation just did not represent the handling of the real thing, or if it did, then the real thing would not have been certified. We went to another manufacturers sim in the USA, ( Yeah, we had to go that far), and tried the same tests, and got results that were more meaningful, to the extent that it was possible to fly manual reversion ( sort of like Sioux city) on that simulator. On the European one, no way, it was so unstable. That was specialised software, custom written for the job, but it was wrong. OK, the airline in question didn't train to the level of needing that accuracy, that's a subject for another discussion on another day. Suffice to say that I for one would never be happy to trust Microsoft on the flight deck.[/thread drift]

iSteve- as everybody is bored to death and quite exhausted by this thread- a bit of creep is probably in order!

Simulators- it's a complete rumour that they are 'true to life' and 'you can't tell the difference'. Garbage! I still don't know whether they are purposely made to be unstable and unreal, but they can be awful- and I think a lot of pilots hate them to bits. The Classic simulator used to be dreadful- so unstable while you were looking at your charts it would be tipping over. The handling is a pathetic representation of the real thing, the visuals quite sad. So I am amused when I see incidents being repeated for analysis in the simulator- I know how unreal it will be. With all due respect for Capt. Al Haynes in the Sioux City DC10 crash (which is undoubtedly one of the most skillful and most amazing stories of piloting in the history of aviation), much was made of the fact that nobody could replicate the survival of some of the passengers in a real simulator. Regretably some of the blame for that lies with how horrible simulators are as well as the extreme height of flying skill shown by the crew that day.

You wouldn't say that if you knew how often Microsoft products crash ......

I know how Microsft products run! That's why I said..........oh never mind.....just pretend I never said it!

So true. I've been closely involved with varying simulators over the years, and as you rightly say, some of them are "interesting" in terms of their fidelity. Even the modern recent ones have their moments, we discovered the hard way that sidelip is not correctly modelled on most sims, probably because heavy jets are not supposed to be slipped, tends to upset the G&T brigade.
We found that one out when we were trying some non standard handling on another occasion.

The real challenge is that so often, if someone wants to "explore" beyond the normal limits, that's seen as being inappropriate, or similar. If Al Haynes hadn't done some "experimenting" prior to the day it all went pear shaped, he wouldn't have had the skills needed to do what he did. With the way things are going now, a pilot that wants to develop "extra" skills is often frowned upon, which to me is a crazy way of encouraging people to be better at their job. Beancounters strike again I suppose.

Following your thread drift, I'm involved with a Mission Computer System for a particular airborne application, which is mission critical (though not flight critical).

Guess which operating system it'll use?























Yes - MS Windows XP!

Agree with you about the handling fidelity of simulators. The ones I used to instruct on as part of my RAF job did not replicate the stick force gradient of the real a/c properly and were less stable at certain speeds. They were far more difficult to fly on 2 engines - a full power double asymmetric go-around was an utter doddle by comparison in the real a/c as we allowed students to experience for themselves during training. But the beancounters wanted increasingly less experienced pilots to do more of their training in the wretched sweat boxes.....

Experimenting may be fun, but it is most definitely frowned upon since the DC10 crew started pulling CBs somewhere in the automatics, and allegedly caused the famous incident of an engine spooling up and bursting its contents causing a cabin breech which sucked a passenger out!