LH A340 X Pond With U/C Down??
 

A LH A340 made a 'refuel' stop at MAN on Sat, It was reported on Ringway Reports that the A/C flew the journey from Charlotte - MAN with it's U/C down and locked??

Aircraft was DAIHM enroute to MUC.

Any truth in this?

Cheers for any replies.:ok:

No problem, just use the FMS fuel predictions.:)

Use FMS predictions
 

I'm sure you're being tongue in cheek, ask Hapag Lloyd about using predictions.

The 777-300 uses about 120% more fuel gear down, so I guess the 340 would be similar. So how far did it supposidly fly with the gear down? Boeings aren't certified to fly more than 50 miles from land. ( we'll at least the CX ones anyway )

Charlotte - MAN.

ACMS, JBC what is your CLB rate & STL speed on the 777-300??

Many Thanks.:ok:

huh?.....................

Maybe he wants to know how fast you can climb and get to St. Louis.

Whatever the fuel burn, extended flight with gear down is frowned upon by the FAA unless the plane is empty, has a ferry permit and you have the gear down data in your books. I've had a friend burned on this issue for continuing a short flight with lots of fuel and gear that would not retract.

how fast I can climb?

Well we would be limited to 270 KIAS with the gear down and I guess the ROC would be around 800 to 1000 FPM? I don't know I've never done it.

The 777-300 ( not the ER ) is thrust limited to about 20,000' ( give or take ) with the gear down.

The kg/anm goes from about 17 for normal ops to as high as 38 to 40 with gear down.

So range is slightly less than half of normal.


So...............The A340 can fly for about 15 to 16 hrs normally? ( just a guess ) So it would be limited to about 7 to 8 with the gear down at maybe 340 KTAS...........So maybe about 2,500 miles range?????

Just a wild guess.

Read this somewhere else days ago, they sorted out the problem while flying along the east coast and then crossed the pond with the gear up.

In case of a revenue flight, it would be preposterous to fly across the pond with gear down. Consider performance criteria with an engine failure mid Atlantic. It would certainly be more "fuel efficient" to dump fuel [down to max landing weight] and land, rather than overburning and then still having to make an en route fuel stop.

Glueball - fully concur. If you can't get the gear up on a 340, 330, or 320 series, the fuel factor kept in the backs of minds of most crews was x2.5.

A gear-down ferry across the Atlantic would be bumping up against an extremely tiny box of performance limitations; the walls, floors and ceilings of ZFW plus fuel required for the ferry, which limits altitude requiring more fuel, which increases takeoff weight which may further restrict altitude which...and that's not accounting for temperature - the balance has to be found and the parameters aren't inherently "stable" in the sense that small variations (lower altitude due traffic or higher temperature, colder air for lower TAS etc) can result in steeply increasing variations in fuel flow and speed.

Given the numbers, I doubt if it was actually done, in fact I've used numbers available to me and it can't be done without stops. One post said they got the gear up. Clearly they did because they didn't have to ditch. Regardless, risk outweighs all but emergency benefits in such an operation and even then planning YYR - KEF would be necessary. The airplane wouldn't do Charleston - MAN gear down.

Just for fun (to show when one could get wet), here are some sample numbers:

Gear-down ferry, Airbus A340-300
240kt/M0.52 Cruise Charts
Max certified alt 350
Actual max alt for an Atlantic crossing, empty but with sufficient fuel for the crossing, FL200
Numbers for 210k kgs @ 200:
N1 92.7%
Kg/h/eng 2754kg/hr
NM/1000kg 29.0nm
Mach 0.520
IAS 237kts
TAS 319kts
OEW 130k kg, approx

A shorter leg than Charleston to LHR, YYZ - LHR flight, is about 3200nm or, at 350kts across the water, about 9hrs 30min depending upon holding at BOV...:bored: I could calculate the climb and descent fuel but won't bother because this is academic, so the above cruise fuel numbers might be a bit high, (conservative) but a rough guess at the fuel load using the book numbers for cruise would be a minimum of 120k kg, or more than what it takes to get from YYZ to HKG...at today's prices I can't imagine even the beancounters thinking about it.

A jammed slat/flap condition or even main gear doors down will increase the fuel flow by a factor of about 2.5 as well. In my view, that stops any overseas operations.

Airbubba...heyyyy, that's a trick question, eh?.... ;-)

PJ2 is right.

One of Monarch's A330s is in Gander after ferrying from Stanford with the gear down. The Atlantic crossing wasn't taken due to the poor aircraft performance in the event of an engine failure. Airbus engineers and their equipment have been flown out to fix the gear. I'm sure there are a few bean counters passed out on the floor of Mon HQ.

Source : The Aviation Herald

It takes you an hour to get the gear up, and you press on across the Atlantic? With pax on board?

Jesus, what is this industry headed for?

It's called customer service and it's perfectly safe.

Lufthansa dispatch would/could have provided a new flight plan in gear down configuration for the crossing if it was necessary. The flight deck drivers could make a clear go or no-go decision. If the flight was only about 3:30 late at final destination and based on what else has been written here so far, then the whole thing was not a big deal at all. Occasionally these thing happen. Good fer them. :ok:

Touch n oops

The Monarch A330 only stopped in Goose to refuel and was to continue across the Atlantic. Unfortunately further damage to the undercarriage was discovered, hence the reason it stayed in Goose.
Its now back in service!

Deja vu?
 

Ahem....Manchester 6

I did wonder when it climbed out of MAN if the gear went up. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy....again! :{

Ok then....................about what I said.

The 777-300 achieves about 38 kg/anm at FL200 gear down
The A343 achieves about 34kg/anm gear down. ( from your figures: 11016 kg/hr with 319 TAS )

No it's not.

I can think of a bunch of gear failure modes that would cause trouble retracting the gear. And a couple of them would damage things enough that the ensuing landing would be exciting.

And throw a crossing in there - with reduced diversion options, RVSM requirements.... They made it so they look great now but BELIEVE me, had they put it down in Greenland with a couple of inop brakes and full of passengers, the resulting investigation would have been a bear.