Another reason not to fly Asiana
 

Incident: Asiana A388 over Pacific on Sep 27th 2016, cargo smoke indication

Incident: Asiana A388 over Pacific on Sep 27th 2016, cargo smoke indication

By Simon Hradecky, created Wednesday, Sep 28th 2016 20:54Z, last updated Wednesday, Sep 28th 2016 20:54Z
An Asiana Airbus A380-800, registration HL7626 performing flight OZ-201 from Los Angeles,CA (USA) to Seoul (South Korea) with 353 people on board, was enroute at FL360 about 710nm southsoutheast of Anchorage,AK (USA), 820nm west of Vancouver,BC (Canada) and 1460nm northnorthwest of Los Angeles when the crew received a cargo smoke indication. The crew decided to turn around and return to Los Angeles for a safe landing about 3:40 hours later and about 7 hours after departure.

The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground for 12.5 hours, then departed again and is estimated to reach Seoul with a delay of 19.5 hours.

The airline declined to comment.

Asiana (OZ) #201 ? 27-Sep-2016 ? KLAX - ICN / RKSI ? FlightAware

We don't know all the details yet but wouldn't you want to divert to the closest suitable airport?

Simple probable explanation :-
Smoke warning does not always indicate real smoke. it could just be a detector fault.
If an inspection does not find smoke ask base for advice and go where the engineering facilities and spare parts are available.

It may have been a detector fault, but how on earth is the crew going to 'inspect' the cargo compartment(s) to check for 'real smoke'? If you have no way of verifying the indication is false, then wouldn't it be prudent to divert to the nearest suitable airport?

The only false fire warning is the one you find out about after landing, until then, they are all real.

Not much difference between Anchorage and Vancouver in flying time.

Continuing back to LAX, there's several bolt holes available if the situation worsens.

How much trust do we want to place in the cargo fire suppression system?

Acknowledging the fact that very little is known right now, I'd certainly have preferred to land in ANC, even if I'd never been there before. Assuming the wx was ok, not having facilities to deal with an A380 (I don't think there's and A380 service to ANC) would be the least of my concerns.

At the same time, do we know for sure that ANC was in their nav database? Quite frustratingly, I fly by many long, suitable runways every day that aren't in my database. I have to pull out my chart to know they're down there.

That's where we are today in the airline world: can't lower the flaps, put down the gear, nor move the thrust levers and the control column (or sidestick) to fly the aircraft to a landing on a runway unless the airport is in the database.

Sad.

Flying the NOPAC how could PANC not be in the database? And, OZ has flown into Anchorage from the gitgo. An A380 pax load would sure help the Captain Cook with occupancy this time of year.

But I agree, those legacy Pegasus FMS's with 6 megabytes of memory and limited databases should be long gone in airline ops by now. The wifi in the cabin has gone through more upgrades than the boxes in the cockpit in many cases. Hopefully this isn't problem on the A380, maybe they have 16 megabytes of memory in the boxes by now. ;)

And all those military fields should be shown for emergency purposes, like, say, a cargo fire. :eek:

If there is no clearly identifiable reason to divert to LAX it is obvious that a closer airfield should be chosen. It would be drawing a long bow to say that land ASAP or land at the nearest suitable airfield meant fly to LAX.

If the ECAM procedure stopped the warning, this means a higher probability that there was a fire and what capability is there to have multiple attempts at the procedure? If ECAM procedure did not stop the warning I would have to assume worst case.

Cargo fire or smoke in cabin are a couple of really serious problems and I would not be surprised if some Asiana Sky Gods had never seriously had a long look at what they would actually do.

My company would be informed of captain decision and a very convincing case would be needed to fly an additional 700nm.

In the past, observed Asiana weak points were:

• inadequate airfield data base and failure of crews to research missing airfields
• no timely updating jepps
• no timely updating operating manuals
• not always responding to documented legitimate safety concerns of crew

If he was concerned enough to turn around he should have put it down at the first suitable.

Yep.

1/ the A380 would have had PANC in the FM data base.
2/ smoke warning, LAND ASAP in Red on the ECAM, yes Red for a reason!!

The mind boggles....

Bring back smoke tubes....

Regulations should require Airlines to put ALL airports suitable for the equipment at least into the Electronic Flight Bag Database. With Nav providers charging for their manuals by the airport, there seems to be a strong bias for airlines to economize by just putting in enough airports to cover erneute alternate requirements.

It's quite frustrating to know there are airports beneath you that would suffice for an emergency landing but having NO information at all about them on the (electronic) books.

Having them in the FMS would be even better, and all FMS should be required to have a "closest airports" function.

They do have that function.......

I would be willing to bet you that the A380 would have PANC airport data all complete in its database.

If not then they could easily have created a RUNWAY in the database PANC06 ( for e.g. ) filled in all the required data fields then changed the destination to PANC06, off they go.

They would have ANC VOR waypoint Lat Long ( the VOR would be in the database and probably the ILS as well ) and they could track direct, then manually tune the ILS ( unless the ILS is in the database already ) and VOR for a conventional landing after radar vectors

We fly to a few Airports that don't have the ILS in the FM due system problems, it doesn't stop us landing using the ILS.

What happened to good old fashioned VOR and/or ILS tuning if required?

I fly the A380 and it is in our database.

it's LAND ASAP (In red for a reason)

Just go back and edit your post to make the writing RED like I did above. :ok:

Looks better!!

It took them another 1460nm and 3:40 to land when there were closer airfields ?!? ......geeze I wouldn't want to have been on that flight

100% correct.

Maybe they contacted Asiana Operations Control on the Sat Phone and were directed where to go........decision making is not a strong thing in many Asian Cultures and if someone else makes the decision then they cannot loose face if this proves to be wrong.......