And flight crews re-educated as to the importance of checking they are locked before going flying.

... and manufacturers need to be re-educated as to the design of systems and human fallibility. :)

Hopefully in time we will see a microswitch retrofitted to cowl latch and a nice ECAM 'ENG 1/2 cowl open' when the engineer helps you out...

Another engine cowling
 

Cough:
Hopefully in time we will see a microswitch retrofitted to cowl latch and a nice ECAM 'ENG 1/2 cowl open' when the engineer helps you out...

I should like to think engine cowlings can be aerodynamically designed in such a way as not to be able to open during flight.
Moreover what is wrong with a REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT tag on the latches?

The number of this type of incidents cause me to be embarrased for Maintenance staff world-wide. These cowls are opened ONLY by Maintenance staff; and it is the responsibility of an Engineer to ensure those cowls get closed & latched after said opening.

...and there are 4 of them. I can understand if you forget to lock one, or miss to check one during walkaround. But to completely forget to lock any of them or to completely miss to check all of them is just another indicator for where we are heading for, if cost is our highest priority.

Since the cowls lock together as a pair, it is not possible leave an odd number unlocked. I was also under the impression this was 2 cowls not 4 this time.

Believe me, Maintenance folks don't deliberately fail to follow procedures, it is a repetitive mundane / easily distracted function performed thousands of times per day all over the world and the error is always classic Human Factors. There is nothing to do with cost saving. It is down to the authorities and Airbus's sadly lacking will to correct the design with any great urgency. Airbus's standard response is always "didn't follow procedures".

Are they failing to actually latch the latches? Or are the latches not being latched "properly"?

I was under the impression it was the later....:confused:

They are either latched or not. There is no "latched, but not latched properly" configuration.

Yes, the handles can be pressed flush without the hooks being engaged at all, but that's not the same thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Rohr (or indeed Airbus?) release a VSB, so it was easier to determine whether the latch was insecure? Paint the latch in orange or another high contrast colour?

The latch design, mods, etc (on both CFM and IAE engines) were extensively discussed in this thread following the BA A319 cowl separation:

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...-heathrow.html

Not sure that helps, I seem to recall a post on a much earlier thread about this issue that the problem was that when the cowls were open the dangling latch was a nuisance and was sometimes pushed flush to get it out of the way. Then the cowls get closed but unless someone immediately opens the latch, engages and re-latches them it can appear to a quick glance that all is closed and latched whereas they aint.

Have to say it sounds to me like the latch design is the problem here, classic Human Factors issue?

This Spirit 319, do we know which engines?

V2524 according to Av Herald

training the answer?
 

Maintenance companies need to do more to prevent these events. Saying that this is down to human factors is really only relevant if the company involved analyze where the break down happened and resolve the issue.
In my opinion this is down to poor maintenance standards and a failure of the organisation to prevent a well publicized and preventable event.
I would think that in the majority of similar cases the same would apply.

Generally, for an isolated incident I would agree. However in this case with this frequency of the issue, across several different organizations, I feel the 'once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action' rule applies! The 'enemy action' in this case is poor latch design.

Yes it is 2 cowls locked against each other by 4 locks. Probably locking and latching just one (the forward one) would be enough to fly safely...
Not too sure about that. If a design is known to be poor, it should normally get special attention by the mechanics. However, it looks more like it gets no attention at all.
Anyway I agree that a latch in a dirty location where you have to knee down to get to it is poor. But it is hard to design it any other way, if you want gravity to close the doors so that the latching can be done by a single person, then this is the only possible design. You may move the handles to the side of the cowling where it can easily be reached and checked and actuate the locks by bowden cable, but that would just create new failure causes. (at the moment these are KISS latches...)

I think the key here is knowledge and attention.

Whoopsie. Here we go again.

Certain historical aircraft designs have succeeded in both eliminating the risk of loose cowlings damaging control surfaces, stabilisers, and/or engine subsystems, and reducing maintenance workloads. We should learn from the lessons of the past.

A careful comparison of the foreground and background aircraft in the picture linked below perhaps illustrates my point.
http://www.trimotors.awiggins.com/im...nd707atSFO.jpg

In the automotive industry, it has long been recognised that uncommanded opening of engine cowlings can lead to an sudden and disorienting loss of visual references - often abruptly followed by uncontrolled impact with terrain.

To this end, automotive designers have created double cowling locking mechanisms, combined with sprung cowlings, such that if at least one locking mechanism is not engaged, the cowling springs open, and the absence of locking is immediately apparent, except perhaps in conditions of extremely poor visibility.

It would not be difficult to arrange the latch such that it cannot be moved to the 'latched' position unless it was correctly mated with the other half.. That way even a quick glance would show the thing was not latched.

It's all about the mindset of the engineer!
 

All of these issues would be of no consequence if the engineer closing the cowls did so correctly! The latches have not been proven to be faulty, ie. open, having been closed correctly.

Cowls should be either open on stays, or fully closed and latched!

It is madness to drop the cowls off the stays and say to yourself ill latch those later!

It requires a discipline and mindset that I'm afraid is not, nowadays, brow beaten into you during the modern abbreviated apprenticeships.

I'm not sure even Human Factors can be used as an excuse. Allowing yourself to be distracted during a critical task borders on negligence! Pilots don't go for a p on finals do they?

Unless it's going really badly?

Who would know? Is there even evidence they have legs or get out much anymore? Discipline and mindsets - now there's an idea.

Well discipline might be a concept of the past. Forcing somebody to do the right thing may be replace by the more human approach of educating and motivating him.
on second thought discipline might be the cheaper way...

The a/c operator demands an on time departure, its quicker to open them, have a quick look, drop them back down, besides, you're on your own and its tricky/dangerous to try and put the stays in on your own. You need to open them again in a minute anyway so you just leave them like that for now.

You've just dropped the cowls down and are about to latch them....

Enter dispatcher,
"Eng? The captain wants you and we are holding boarding until he speaks to you, by the way we have a slot and the crew go out of hours in 30 mins. "

Enter refueller..

"Eng? The total fuel has stopped short by about 500 kilos and I've got a dash 8 on a quick turn round screaming for fuel!"

Enter loading supervisor...
"Eng? The aft cargo door won't close"

Ring ring..
"Allo, MCC here, the xyz123 will be with you in five minutes with a bev maker leaking all over the fwd galley, it will need a zonal inspection in the avionics bay"

That is not an exaggeration.

Perhaps, but it can also be brow beaten out of you by non technical aviation "professionals" who have no concept of the consequences when interrupting any maintenance task (or even a flight deck briefing).

When driven by performance related pay and an on time departure is a must, some just really do not care.

I make no excuses, just trying to offer a more realistic point of view.

There for the grace of... etc.

On an A320/737 ?

How so ?

Interrupted checks are always dangerous. So it is not the engineer that is causing the problem it is the people repeatedly interrupting that are doing so.

This is a management issue (not as in 'the management' but as in managing the jobs)

Each of those interrupts has differing levels of priority. Rather then the meanest or most friendly obtaining priority the jobs should be added to the engineer job list. Any direct tasking access to the engineer should be avoided, he should finish the job and associated checks then access his job-list to find the next highest priority job. Emergency interrupts to a job should be treated as the job being marked not-started so that there is no 'half finished' job.

Forcing this level of management discipline actually forces 'The Management' to realize when they are overtasking. Managing job allocation is simple with the current information systems and the engineer does not take random inputs just says to the captain, the loading supervisor, the refueller - "put the task on the list with maintenance and they might allocate someone else who is not in the middle of a job."

Ian W
In an ideal world Ian I would agree with you. However, on a line station, at night when there's perhaps only one or two on shift its a different story.

DaveReid

It's windy? You may have a chronic back injury. It may be -10c and you've lost all feeling in your fingers. who knows?

Then the 'management' have to accept the responsibility for putting place a flight safety hazard and the occasional incident caused by interruption of engineering checks. The problem being the 'only one or two on shift' and no organized method of 'tasking'.

Yeah, good luck with that. Something similar is happening in medicine--to reduce errors, nurses that are doing meds are now wearing a "don't talk to me" button while they are doing meds so they don't get sidetracked. Don't know how well it's working.

TURIN's scenario rings very true to me. Yet, until I retired from A320s years ago, I led a comparitively sheltered existence - enjoying longer scheduled turnrounds than the budget carriers, and a mangement that tolerated safety as a higher priority than punctuality.

In the early days, we had only CFMs. As a specialist line-checker, one of my concerns when observing external checks was to confirm that the cowling latches were properly observed as being flush with the nacelle. This can only be done by stooping low, and using a torch at night. my reports often reminded crews that the unlatched fan cowlings hang very low and close.

However short the turnround, the flight crew should check them after any engineering work - even if it's just a routine change of the chip-detectors. If that involves a pilot leaving the cockpit after the last of the pax have boarded, it's not going to delay departure more than 5 minutes at the most on an A319. And no engineer worth his salt would be offended by the flight crew completing a check that is one of its listed responsibilities.

Exactly the kind of thing you need to avoid! That "for now" moment. Is the moment when you may be distracted. Best to not let that moment occur in the first place. It only takes 30sec to latch the cowls!

I agree Ian

I recently had a dispatcher carry a tech log across from another aircraft, whilst I was changing a brake unit.

"I only need a quick signature"! He said.
":mad:"
He soon went off with his tail between his legs!:)

Without wishing to be a killjoy, I haven't seen anything in this thread that hasn't already been covered in the 1000+ posts following the BA A319 incident.

Dave,

Does that include your own contributions? ;)

Put the hinges on the bottom and the latches on top. :}

I was waiting for someone to ask that. :O

But yes, I'm as guilty as anyone else of simply rehashing what has already been discussed at length following the BA event.

With the fan cowl doors formerly, if not still, subcontracted to Bombardier Belfast.