A320 wiper kept running
 

A A320 flight took off yesterday in light rain in Mumbai with wipers on. after takeoff, captain's wiper failed to turn off. crew returned back to Mumbai.
on ground AME found a faulty wiper converter.

Seems a bit drastic!

Surely they could have pulled the CB to stop it running.

Quote on that. Indigo some more facts that lead the crew to take this decision ?

Ah but this is an airbus you see, pulling a CB for the wipers might cause the engines to flame out! Well...maybe not that drastic, but we are strongly discouraged to pull CB's that are not on the reset list. There is no CB list anywhere to be found in the FCOM.

"Hello Dave, I've turned your wipers on for you."
"Hello Dave, my angle of attack probes are all saying I'm about to stall at Mach 0.8 and 250kts so I've pushed the nose down to -10 degs. You won't be able to control me unless you turn me off. Oh and by the way, there is no off switch fitted."

What was the forecast for destination? The PF's wiper (in this case, the captain) is required for CAT II and III.

In his explanation, captain mentioned that fact that the max speed with wiper on is 230 kts. so he could not continue to his destination New Delhi (departure Mumbai). Also, he said that wiper motor might have turned hot and led to the fire. so he decided to return. on CB pulling, there is no such procedure. so he refrained from experimenting and turning the flight deck into a lab when there was no such urgency.

230 knots in our FCOM.

Don't forget how much damage a wiper may do to a dry windscreen. Not to mention the distraction factor of the thing.

Agree with Dan...

Interesting train of tought. What does the QRH say, and AFM more importantly?

It's about 8 years since I last flew the A320, but I agree about the 230kt limit for the wipers.

Secondly, I don't believe that there is a QRH /ECAM for this as it is a pilot selectable item.

Thirdly, I can see nothing in the MEL (albeit not up to date) relating to dispatch restrictions.

To me, the crew on the day seem to have made a perfectly sensible decision, probably after consulting his Maintenance department, to discontinue the flight. I for one, wouldn't wish to test the reliability/endurance of a wiper motor for ~2hours on a dry screen.

Pulling the CB out seems like a good idea...

Could it possibly have any other repercussion other than the wiper shutting off?

The wipers on Boeing 757 are crap, rarely do they stop when switched off, but usually one of them keeps on banging for another 10-15 sec. On one of my flights they did not quit, so the F/O (eventually) found the CB and pulled it. Quite distracting and incredibly noisy. Never seen a speed limit for them though. :ugh:
The old pneumatic "rain removal" system on the DC-8 although very noisy was probably better.

Question is : when do you use 'out of the box' solutions, like pulling the CBs not suggested by the manufacturer?

I would reserve the 'out of the box' solutions for the scenarios where there is no other way out.

In this particular case, returning back to the airport was the easiest, safest, legal way out. why not?

In modern aircraft, particularly those with FBW systems, I'd have to concur with "never - unless it is literally a life-or-death situation if you don't, and even then, you'd better be bloody sure".

The way I see it, the airlines demanded that these aircraft become more complex in terms of systems, leading to fewer crew-serviceable scenarios than there once were. They also made the decision to rely more on SOPs in order to mitigate risk. Consequently, once in a while they're going to have to take an RTB due to something as simple as a non-cancelling windscreen wiper, and accept that the Captain's RTB decision was completely justified.

IFLY_INDIGO

If this happens again on your flight, I hope not... You'd consider diverting or pulling out the CB

These days our loads are rubbish but, imagine a DEL - CCU or DXB - HYD sector where we are tankering crazy amounts of fuel and overweight landing would have to be done.

Or even worse, we'd have to burn off those 3-4 tons of fuel.


Do you think, perhaps pulling out tthe CB might be a good thing to do?

Unintended consequences.


Unfortunately you never know what else is on the circuit when you start pulling and /or resetting breakers without a specific procedure.


One of our crews lost both internal speed cards on each one of their EADI's (B757) in fact each one was red flagged.


In response and quite reasonably they reset the 'Speed Card' CB's on the overhead.


They were very surprised to then see the RAT extend where it stayed for the rest of the flight, naturally as it cannot be retracted once deployed.


Unbeknownst to them or anyone else in flight ops this is how Maintenance performs a RAT test and the circuit is shared with the 'speed card'


It did fix the speed card though.. :eek:

I'd start by looking in the FCOM abnormal ops for solution. As there is none available for this kind of problem, I would start using common sense. As always, there are more solutions for a given problem, especially if it is not covered in any of the books in the aircraft... Although returning is a perfectly safe course of action, I would have tried pulling the cb for the wiper (undocumented procedure for an undocumented problem)... DODAR - letter O is quite important.