75/76 flaps/slats coming off.

[blue up]

I'm running our annual refresher tech courses and flaps/slats are one of the modules covered.

Does anyone know how frequently these airframes have had flaps/slats come off in-flight? Any known handling difficulties from the missing components? Any links to tech articles or incident reports?

Thanks, guys.

[stilton]

Never heard of that on the 75/6

[Beeline]

Surely a more realistic scenario would be asymmetry, or jamming, or in the recent jumbos slat case retracting. They don't often 'fall off'.

[Kuchan]

Flaps/slats come off in-flight is a seroius fatal accident/MOR issue which you could google it in CAA aircraft accidental report or ask UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) tel: General Enquiries: 01252 510300 [email protected] or R & D dep of an AOC.

[Bergerie1]

Back in the 1980s British Airways (and others- PAA and TWA I think) had three incidents of flap tracks breaking on their older 747-100s. The cause was corrosion pits in the bolt holes acting as stress raisers, resulting in a flap track breaking. I cannot remember whether this occurred only on the inner sets of trailing edge flaps or on the outers. The breakage occurred when flap 30 was selected and in each case the crews elected to continue the approach and landing. In each case the flap set remained attached and the aircraft could be held wings level with the control spectacle rotated through about 90 degs (I cannot remember whether some rudder was required too). In each case the aircraft landed safely.