Sand and engines
Thread Starter
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 13
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From: Europe
Sand and engines
In cities like Dubai, the air obviously contains a lot of sand/ dust. Does this affect engine performance or engine wear? I'm thinking especially of operators like Emirates that have a large number of flights in these areas.
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 364
Likes: 29
From: Somewhere very sunny !
Yes it does, thats the long and short of it. Salt also plays a bit no no. I fly over salt water low level daily so the engines are washed with fresh water every night and every 50 hours the engines are chemically washed to remove oxidation on the compressor blades.
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,581
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From: flyover country USA
I've seen turboprop engines used in desert conditions (just down the coast from Dubai) run out of performance margin after a few hundred hours of low-altitude ops. Very expensive to operate there! 
Joined: Oct 2002
Aviation Qualifications: PPL
Posts: 8,203
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From: London UK
Wonder how this affects the Loganair flights onto Barra beach, invariably wet.
Airborne corrosion crops up in all sorts of places round the world. Miami is strangely the worst in the USA for its combination of corrosive dust and humidity, which allows it to settle on exposed metal. The Miami Metro had to have its railway cars made from a special corrosion-proofed steel compared to other such operators in the USA, and if you've ever visited there you will see relatively mid-life cars on the road developing rust in all sorts of unlikely places like along the roofline. I wonder how this affects the large number of Miami-based operators.
Airborne corrosion crops up in all sorts of places round the world. Miami is strangely the worst in the USA for its combination of corrosive dust and humidity, which allows it to settle on exposed metal. The Miami Metro had to have its railway cars made from a special corrosion-proofed steel compared to other such operators in the USA, and if you've ever visited there you will see relatively mid-life cars on the road developing rust in all sorts of unlikely places like along the roofline. I wonder how this affects the large number of Miami-based operators.
