BA emergency landing Barcelona
 

Hi just got word of this anyone know what type of aircraft was involved ? seems this happened moments prior to landing according to sky news.



BA Flight Makes Emergency Landing - Yahoo! News UK

Very nice job by the pilots. This is a great reminder for all of us to know our emergency procedures like the back of our hand. You never know when your test may be around the corner!

*le sigh*

So I'm guessing that would be standard "dim the cabin lights before landing at night" practice.

No - the QRH drill includes switching off the "utility busses" thus removing cabin lighting. Crew were pre-warned.

The link below includes a neat graphic showing the switching.....

Click here


If you click on the electrics panel (second column from left/ forth block up -just above APU control) it expands to show the detail.

Bad wording, sorry. I guess what I meant was that what was happening was perfectly standard practice for the situation but SkyNews were doing their usual "sexing up" of the story.

Cheers for the link - dead handy! :)

Shock, horror, whatever next?:}

tannoy...what the hell is a tannoy? is that an interphone?

Tannoy is an English manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address (PA) systems

Tannoy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The only thing more annoying than unresearched journalists sexing up stories are the drivers among us complaining about it... Can MOD plse close the thread unless something technical re: the incident can be posted.

For interested readers

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-bal...2-02-10-a.html

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-bal...don-barca.html

either that or BA have been having a particularly bad run of luck in LEBL:)

Post #3 on thread 2 kind of puts it all into non-journo perspective?

This makes me cross. I was a passenger on this flight and NO this was not standard light dimming. My uncle is a retired pilot who flew for more than 30 years and I know procedure.

The cabin lights went off, completely and we were left in the pitch black. Stewardesses went around the cabin staying there was a problem with the electrics, but not to panic. Landing in pitch black and being stuck in it inside the plane for nearly two hours was not fun.

What is worse is this fault occurred BEFORE the plane took off. As the plane taxied and the safety video had just started all the lights in the cabin went off as did the TVs. About 10 seconds later they came back on, we were told not to worry. The safety video was not re-shown.

We were later told this same plane had reported the same smell and been forced to perform the same emergency landing on Friday. The plane also dumped its fuel prior to returning, so there was clearly concern to get back as fast as possible.

The whole incident was handled extremely poorly. We were left on the plane for over two hours and there was no communication as to why. Water was eventually offered after more than an hour and many of the passengers were left badly shaken.

According to Flight Stats it was an A320.

gordonakelly,

A previous post shows a 757 panel, was it a 757 ?

Don't think 757 can dump fuel as a rule.

And, if fuel dumping is done, means all going well with loads of time, when time in air wants to be small, pilots will just land ASAP and no dumping will be done....
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Flt stats show 320 today and 757 yesterday......what was it thursday.....

Oh and it was a 757, not an Airbus. The exact same 757 that had the identical "strange smell" problem earlier.

Electrical smell
 

Not very much thread drift, but I was on an AA 767 returning from .... somewhere (?) a few years back, when my seat arm did something very similar. There was no-one in the seat next to me and I wanted to spread out a bit. I lifted the seat arm, but when it got to about 45 degrees all the cabin lights went out and there was a distinct smell of 'train set'. :eek:

I returned to seat arm to home position and after a few seconds the lights came on. I thought; 'that wasn't me - was it?' I had more or less convinced myself that it wasn't, so I tried again. Wham - out went all the lights and the smell of burning came again so, I returned it to level very quickly. As an engineer, I wasn't about to challenge the power supplies on my aeroplane if I could avoid it so, as soon as I could, I collared one of the crew and warned him seat arm 28F was the cause of the cabin lighting failure. He was very polite, but totally condescending - how could an SLF possibly know about aeroplane problems? :rolleyes:

When I left the aircraft at LHR, I reminded the CC that seat 28F had a serious problem and they smiled sweetly and said they would look in to it.

I bet that 767 took off again with a serious electrical problem.

Roger.

Landroger

Thats one of those one of see by doing to that member of CC. Do it a few times while they are standing there and then ask "Do you believe me now".

You can't get blamed for doing it as technically its impossible.

Racedo
 

Yes, I realised that later Racedo. :ugh: Some days you have to beat them with sticks. :)

ROger.

Cmon-PullUP

Of course the Pax is correct it wasn't fun and they should know.

You also are correct, there is no sense in blaming the crew for the inconvenience.

carry on .... no harm meant

Strange Smells
 

Flight deck odors on 757s are far from unknown & have resulted in oxygen masks & a return before on BA 75s. The usual culprit is the well known engine oil in the air con system, which one 757 skipper I know, says happens almost every time they open the taps - perhaps not as badly as previous declarations of emergency.

We're getting into Aerotoxic Syndrome territory now, so maybe I risk this diverging into an argument about that, but are we sure this was electrical?

C'mon-PullUP: You've missed the point. The comments were not about the way in which the flight crew handled the in-flight situation - they were more about what happened (or did not happen on the ground) before and after the flight. I'm sure that when the problem occurred during flight, the flight deck crew did exactly what they were required to do.

The aircraft had a temporary partial power system failure before take-off and the pax were told not to worry, all is OK. After take-off, same thing happens again. I'd suggest that is a little unnerving even for experienced pax, as it means the problem was not fixed on the ground and that therefore the crew do not have a 100% understanding of the fault.

It is on the ground that things could have been done better. Sitting in the aircraft, in the dark presumably, with apparently very little or no communications from any of the crew is a real cause for concern. One way to keep passengers settled is to let them know what is being done to fix the problem and the prognosis for completing the journey. Communications were obviously inadequate, to say the least. This is not rocket science, just good working practice. You say that ‘2 hour without information is a little strange’ – I’d say it was verging on incompetence on the part of the cabin and flight deck crew. (And, yes, I know that may be a little harsh as well – but it is their job!). It’s not that difficult for one of the crew every 15-20 minutes to keep passengers advised of the situation. Even saying that they don’t know when it will be fixed at the very least lets passengers know they have not been forgotten

Furthermore, if it is true that this was not the first time that this aircraft experienced the same fault, perhaps further questions need to be asked.

I say these things as an ex-maintainer of aircraft and someone who now flies frequently as a fare-paying passenger. I hold flight deck crew and cabin crew in high regard, but it is as well to remember that it is not ‘pathetic’ to expect to be treated as a paying customer.