tcx247k 'Main Battery Fault' 5th/6th June 09

[DJRC]

A friend of mine was travelling on tcx247k from London Gatwick to Corfu on the 5th/6th June this year when a couple of hours into the flight the plane turned back to Gatwick due to technical reasons, which he has since found out from the airline was because the aircraft "suffered a fault with the main battery that could not be resolved by the flight crew. The fault had to be resolved by qualified engineers and Corfu does not have the required engineers available. There was little choice but to have the fault resolved in the UK where specialist engineering staff were available."
Would it not have been cheaper and more practical to land at Corfu and have the engineer flown out on the next flight?

I'm just looking for a little insight into this as I have no airline SOP knowledge, or what the consequences of a 'main battery fault' would be.

[Rainboe]

No it would not. Return to base is usually preferable. When could the Engineer get out there?.....'next flight?'. Could be next day. Maybe it needs more than one head, and access to spares. So wait at least 12 hours to get an engineer out there, then he orders spares...er wait a minute- they have to come out on the next next flight. Woops, crew are out of hours in Corfu- have to go to hotel and they need 12 hours! Better to get back to base, crew change, quick repair and go.

[DJRC]

Thanks for the feedback Rainboe, has anyone experienced a Main Battery fault, if so, what can be the consequences? Are there any system losses, or just a loss of redundancy on the battery supply?

[mitzy69]

on the ground swop the main battery for the APU battery.
in the air the main generators supply electric power, so only a warning message.
If generators fail then battery might last an hour suppling a few indicators and 1 radio.
L1011 things went safe should electric power fail ie the valves stayed open and still supplied fuel air hydraulic pressure.
B707 was controlled by pilots muscle thru cables and levers.