LATAM B773 complete electrical failure?
 

Incident: LATAM B773 near Belo Horizonte on Dec 20th 2018, electrical failures

Surprised this isn't a hot topic - I must not understand the situation correctly.

CESSNA MODE
 

Looks like they reverted to basic Night VFR Cessna mode. Put the gear and flaps down, and plopped it onto a suitable runway. Everyone OK and aircraft reusable.
Good Job!

I’m surprised too. Or not...
 

ipad arrival anyone? ;)

Have to say it surprises me too. I'd be interested to hear from some 777 experienced people what they think could have happened which would render both engine generators as well as APU unavailable. By the looks of it they were on stand by electrics including the RAT generator. Obviously it was enough to land the plane but no easy feat most probably.

AV Herald report on B777-300ER diversion
 

Might need a couple of new harnesses / looms too.

The MH370 people will, no doubt, be looking at this with deep interest.

"The MH370 people will, no doubt, be looking at this with deep interest."

Key Operative line is that the captain kept communicating with ATC on the one remaining radio.....

The other issue is how it was reported here in Brazil, a company spokesman / very senior manager / exec said (I'll find the original quote in Portuguese later, so translating from memory)

"I have spoken to the cabin crew of this flight, one member told me that this was a miracle and without faith and God, we would all certainly be dead"

A very interesting stance for the company to take.

By interesting... I think I mean "ridiculous". What are people's thoughts on this?

It certainly will be interesting to know what electrics they had left and what caused this. Aircraft like this have considerable levels of automatic electrical fault isolation and huge redundancy that only multiple failures can cripple. However, as some of us appreciate, when !!!! happens....
Good to see a safe landing! :)

This is doing the rounds already in Brazil... Whatever was wrong, was no small thing

Impressive, the crew managed the airplane for at least 3 hours with 1 radio link and basic instrumentation, at night time.
A serious glitch indeed, wonder if the preceding faults had any connection to this.

That pdf link from JumpJumpJump really is worth looking at.

Rob

Well, the dude talked to the best educated people (cabin crew) on the matter and referring to a captain / flight crew as "god" certainly is correct...

It is indeed worth looking at ...
Looks like a freaking nightmare.
Well done guys !!!

Agreed - this is beyond scary.
But after the recent posts lamenting the loss of traditional pilot skills, this is a wonderful testimony to a very competent crew.

Like very many of the other comments regarding this incident, my opinion, is that it was a serious situation & was certainly very well handled by the Crew.

Update from AvHerald
 

Updated description of the electrical failures

IF the AV Herald report is correct, and circuit breakers had tripped, I would be interested to learn whether or not the crew attempted to reset them. Back in the dark ages that was a standard troubleshooting procedure, but these days it is greatly frowned upon; so greatly in fact, that at my employer we are supposed to first contact maintenance, which for this crew obviously would have been impossible. Great job landing this crippled airplane.

Also I think the 777 has an avionics bay underneath the cockpit that has breaker panels. Would not be surprised if they put the big stuff there.

It looks like HAL 9000 took control of this airplane electrical system...Probably this is the second incident like this on a tripple. The first was MH370.
Just think about something like this in mid Atlantic.

The fault list reads like a printout of the DDG!

Given that synoptic display, I think I would be erring on the side of getting it on the ground ASAP as at the back of my mind would be the possibility of battery power only, which doesn’t give you that long before you’re in a cockpit with no instrumentation at night. I can’t find it in the manuals but I think the backup batteries in the flight controls are only guaranteed for 20mins... :eek:

There isn’t a MAIN BATTERY DISCH advisory in that list so maybe power was getting through to the battery charger, although I wouldn’t like to depend on it! Top marks to the guys for a rapid and successful diversion. :D

The 777 RAT includes a generator that provides electrical power - you're not dependent on the battery.

Breakers tripped in the avionics bay - now thats why we used to carry an FE,:rolleyes:

Normally I would agree but given the electrical malfunctions that were present, who could say for definite? After all, both IDGs, a backup generator and the APU generator were functional and available but unable to supply power...

Anyone have a photo of the electrical panel in normal operating mode?

If indeed those lines connecting the various components should be green where power is being fed, there are indeed some serious questions to be answered, including if its truly un-powered, or if its just a sensor/signalling error, or a computer/programming bug!


I found this diagram, but it just begs more questions that it answers, especially around the SATCOM being depowered..... and in this case the jettison fuel pumps being INOP.




https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e4a8a917f3.jpg

It's been many years since I was involved in the 777 development, but IIRC, the RAT generator fed the battery bus directly - if they still had the battery bus they would have still had the RAT generator.

DeeVee - again, a couple decades since I was involved, but based on what I remember, the only way they could have lost all main bus electrical power (with both engines running) would have been either:
latent failures in the electrical bus isolation system (there are regular maintenance checks to confirm such failures are not present), or
the crew didn't correctly follow the QRH procedures after the initiating failure.
(or possibly some combination of the two)

Outcome if it had occurred in the middle of an ETOPS? Dog of fate lift its leg on the pillar of science? Be an interesting report.

Sorry FF. but your conspiracy theories don't hold water. Unless you can prove that the customer airphone is one of those few systems that is powered by the battery system in the event of generator or APU power interruption (when even cockpit satcom is not), your attempt to suggest that MH370 suffered a full power interruption is unavailing.

At least there are no issues locating the FDR's :)

A design where the circuit breakers can put all power offline with no obvious way to reset them seems deficient. How does that get regulatory approval?

The incident electrical page shows Main Bat with 28 Volts and 0 Amps. If they were on Bat power only should not be there any load on the amps?

...betcha reading that...a bunch of bean-counter knees went weak...

Interesting - but the phrase "at landing" is a bit ambiguous.

It is certainly true that a RAT, as the name says, runs off ram-air pressure (airspeed) and will need some minimum airspeed (130 knots in a 767) to produce useful output. So they would have lost the RAT power at some point in the final approach or roll-out, even if it was deployed and functioning for most of the event. And been on battery power alone from that point on.