AC A340 Emergency in YVR

gonefishin' · Post by **gonefishin'** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:15 pm

Anybody know the details of the A340 emergency this afternoon at the end of 08R? Lots of emergency vehicles in attendance... I think it was AC007 bound for HKG which returned for some reason.

Lost in Saigon · Post by **Lost in Saigon** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:02 pm

After take off, the flaps would not retract & were locked out. They returned with partial flaps & slats & overweight landing.

Apparently all turned out OK. Crew change & aircraft switch

classiv · Post by **classiv** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:57 pm

Why did they have to land over-weight?

Why not just circle and burn off fuel?

JW · Post by JW » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:27 am

Why not just circle and burn off fuel?

Circle and burn off fuel? I think this 340 was heading to hong kong....thats a lot of circling. I heard the fire crew was spraying the brakes, makes sense.

JW

classiv · Post by **classiv** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:41 am

Can't a 340 dump fuel?

Maybe head over to Salt Spring island and open the taps...

C-GPME · Post by **C-GPME** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:22 am

Nope i don't know about the earlier airbus' but the newer ones can't, remember JetBlue had to circle for a while to burn off the fuel.

JigglyBus · Post by **JigglyBus** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:31 am

JetBlue wasn't a 340.

bizjet_mania · Post by **bizjet_mania** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:45 am

Yea The A340 can dump fuel, but I think its policy for AC not to be dumping fuel. The 767s can dump but they are not allowed to, must land heavy.

Mitch Cronin · Post by **Mitch Cronin** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:42 am

Why dump all that precious fuel when you can just come on back, set her down as purdy as you please, and have the boys do a simple overweight landing inspection... ?

fast · Post by **fast** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:15 am

Ask Swissair where the priority should be dumping fuel or putting the bird on pavement. Most ame's don't have diving certificates on their license. It's easier to inspect an aircraft on pavement than it is at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Axial Flow · Post by **Axial Flow** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:25 am

Little bit different between a flap problem and an inflight cabin fire....

flyinhigh · Post by **flyinhigh** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:31 pm

fast wrote:Ask Swissair where the priority should be dumping fuel or putting the bird on pavement. Most ame's don't have diving certificates on their license. It's easier to inspect an aircraft on pavement than it is at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Dude, was that suppose to be funny, cause it wasn't. Many people lost there lives in that

Mitch Cronin · Post by **Mitch Cronin** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:08 pm

Seems to me...
Something on the airplane is broken.
The flaps won't move.
The airplane is controllable now.
You have no idea what is broken or how bad.
Good time to land.
Landing overweight won't be a big deal.
Hello runway.

?... No?

prop2jet · Post by **prop2jet** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:16 pm

With the price of fuel these days I imagine that if it is possible to land overweight, then that would be prefferable to dumping the juice... especially with the profit margins so tight.

ettw · Post by **ettw** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:32 pm

I'm with Mitch on this one.

Aircraft is controllable...for now...get it on the ground. When this sort of thing happens, I'm guessing that even with an A340, there is still alot of unknown regarding what has actually failed and whether or not the aircraft will remain controllable. I can't imagine the price of fuel and margins being factors in this decision making process.

cyyz · Post by **cyyz** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:46 pm

ettw wrote: I can't imagine the price of fuel and margins being factors in this decision making process.

By the pilots or by the company?

MRO · Post by **MRO** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:50 pm

Agreed Mitch thats a good point.

I dont think Fast was trying to be funny, just making a good point. If swiss air would have landed heavy all those people would not have lost their lives.

Also you cant say that a flap problem is less severe than the inflight fire. The crew of Swiss air did not realize how severe the fire was, they underestimated it and that is why they decided to dump fuel. So if the AC pilots had underestimated the problem and dumped fuel that would tell you that they did not learn anything from swiss 111.

ettw · Post by **ettw** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 3:34 pm

cyyz wrote:
ettw wrote: I can't imagine the price of fuel and margins being factors in this decision making process.
By the pilots or by the company?

you'd like to think it wouldn't matter....

J31 · Post by **J31** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:19 pm

fast wrote:Ask Swissair where the priority should be dumping fuel or putting the bird on pavement. Most ame's don't have diving certificates on their license. It's easier to inspect an aircraft on pavement than it is at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Have you no shame!? Furthermore it is obvious that you have never read the Swiss Air http://www.tsb.gc.ca/en/reports/air/199 ... 8h0003.asp report on that crash. Trying to dump fuel did not prevent them from getting on the ground any sooner. Time, altitude and fire did them in. The aircraft lost most of its power 15 minutes after the first sign of smoke. If you can get a heavy out of F330, on fire, land at a strange airport, at night, in marginal VFR within 15 minutes you are way over confident

.

ahramin · Post by **ahramin** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:28 pm

J31, piloting skills aside, the swissair crew was busy trying to go through the proper procedures rather than trying to get the bird on the ground.

Sometimes the guy who wrote the procedure did not have your specific situation in mind when he wrote it. Sometimes the numbers we memorize don't apply to the situation.

J31 · Post by **J31** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:47 pm

Yes ahramin, you are right the procedures have changed and we have learned from that crash. Airborne fires are dealt with more urgency than before. The focus now is very little troubleshooting and on getting things on the ground.

But if anyone has truly read one of the most exhaustive crash reports ever produced you would realize that was a night from hell. Even if they had pointed at YHZ and tried to land strait in RWY 6 they would have missed the airport entirely. Did they get into checklist more than we would now? Yes. Would they have made it if they had said “forget the checklist lets land” I do not think so and neither did the TSB.

It upsets me that people point to Swiss Air and say they “screwed up”……they put up a valiant effort to survive and lost.

The true crime was in the shitty nonstandard installation of a high power entertainment system. Plastic coated wires wrapped with plastic snap ties….perfect setup for chaffing and inevitable fire hazard! Compounded by insulation that burns very hot.

I have no connection to Swiss Air other than flying out of Halifax regularly and am interested in that crash.

Now that I have hijacked the AC 340….Cheers!

Pratt · Post by **Pratt** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:47 pm

MRO wrote:Agreed Mitch thats a good point.

I dont think Fast was trying to be funny, just making a good point. If swiss air would have landed heavy all those people would not have lost their lives.

Also you cant say that a flap problem is less severe than the inflight fire. The crew of Swiss air did not realize how severe the fire was, they underestimated it and that is why they decided to dump fuel. So if the AC pilots had underestimated the problem and dumped fuel that would tell you that they did not learn anything from swiss 111.

Can't agree with you on that one at all. A flap problem and an inflight fire are two totally different types of an emergency. The fire requires an immediate response and getting on the ground ASAP. The flap problem is not near as critical of a situation. The crew could take the time to get mtc on the radio to troubleshoot the flap problem. You wouldn't be doing that with an inflight fire.

I think that every pilot has learned a lesson from the Swiss Air crash and it will forever be in the back of our minds.

As far as the overweight landing, I highly doubt that the crew was doing it to get the a/c on the ground ASAP, more than likely as previously stated, they did it in consultation with Ops and Mtc. That is what the company wanted them to do, and if it isn't a problem from the pilots perspective as far as stopping distance etc., there would be no reason for them not to do the overweight landing.

CD · Post by CD » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:20 pm

J31 and ahramin...

According to the SR111 final report, you are both correct:

The pilots made a timely decision to divert to the Halifax International Airport. Based on the limited cues available, they believed that although a diversion was necessary, the threat to the aircraft was not sufficient to warrant the declaration of an emergency or to initiate an emergency descent profile.

...

From any point along the Swissair Flight 111 flight path after the initial odour in the cockpit, the time required to complete an approach and landing to the Halifax International Airport would have exceeded the time available before the fire-related conditions in the aircraft cockpit would have precluded a safe landing.

...

Air conditioning anomalies have typically been viewed by regulators, manufacturers, operators, and pilots as not posing a significant and immediate threat to the safety of the aircraft that would require an immediate landing.

...

Actions by the flight crew in preparing the aircraft for landing, including their decisions to have the passenger cabin readied for landing and to dump fuel, were consistent with being unaware that an on-board fire was propagating.

Pratt wrote:The flap problem is not near as critical of a situation. The crew could take the time to get mtc on the radio to troubleshoot the flap problem.

That is quite similar to what the crew of Alaska 261 faced as well...

The airplane's takeoff weight of 136,513 pounds was well below the takeoff and climb limits for the departure runway, but it exceeded the airplane's maximum landing weight of 130,000 pounds. Because the airplane did not have an in-flight fuel dumping system, the airplane would have had to remain in flight for about 45 minutes after takeoff until enough fuel had burned to reduce the airplane's weight by the 6,500 pounds needed to reach the airplane's maximum landing weight. A return to PVR to execute an overweight landing would have required higher-than-normal approach speeds for landing and would have created additional workload and risk. An overweight landing at PVR would have been appropriate if the flight crew had realized the potentially catastrophic nature of the trim anomaly. However, in light of the airplane's handling characteristics from the time of the initial detection of a problem to the initial dive, the flight crew would not have been aware that they were experiencing a progressive, and ultimately catastrophic, failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261

TorontoGuy · Post by **TorontoGuy** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:29 pm

To dump fuel over really open water, they would have had to cross Vancouver Island to the open Pacific and return (they would have hoped).

Mitch Cronin · Post by **Mitch Cronin** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:19 pm

Pratt.. good points...
Re: "I highly doubt that the crew was doing it to get the a/c on the ground ASAP, more than likely as previously stated, they did it in consultation with Ops and Mtc. "

If I was the guy in Mtc. ....talking to them... If the crew couldn't see what the trouble was... (most likely) ...even with the utmost of wireless, digital magical wizardry available, I highly suspect (though I'm not certain) the most I could hope to know ...is the flap drive motor positions, the actual flap positions, and whether or not a wing tip brake or two had been set off... I wouldn't know why, and wouldn't know what, if anything, is broken or soon to be... I'd be wishin' they was down. I'm not a fan of in-flight trouble-shooting of mechanical, monkey-motion failures - other than such as might be necessary to get a gear leg down and locked, or regain control of one axis or another if it's completely lost, I think when things are possibly broken, leaving them locked right where they are might be better than freeing them. (as a matter of interest, I think the ALaskan MD-80 stab runaway story has a lesson in just that question...)

My advice would (probably - depending on what more I might learn that I can't right now think of

) be to bring it down when you reckon you can safely do so.

The ball's back to you? What're you gonna do with that if you're flyin'?

Cheers,
Mitch