[BITList] Fwd: Drama in the cockpit

[Michael Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Stan Thomson" 
Date: 19 November 2010 17:25:57 GMT
To: "Mike feltham" <ismay at mjfeltham.plus.com>
Subject: Fw: Drama in the cockpit

 
 
Drama in the cockpit: Qantas crew faced 54 alarms

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Nov 18, 1:21 PM (ET)

By JOAN LOWY


2

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nobody trains for chaos like this. Out the pilots' left window, far above the ocean, an engine bigger than an SUV had disintegrated, blasting shrapnel holes in their superjumbo jet's wing. And now an overwhelming flood of computer alarms was warning the pilots that critical systems might be failing.
Two weeks after the pilots somehow landed their Qantas jetliner and its 450 passengers, their two-hour cockpit drama was described Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press by the vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association.
"The amount of failures is unprecedented," said Richard Woodward, a fellow Qantas A380 pilot who has spoken to all five pilots. "There is probably a one in 100 million chance to have all that go wrong."
But it did.
Engine pieces sliced electric cables and hydraulic lines in the wing. Would the pilots still be able to fly the plane?
The wing's forward spar - one of the beams that attaches it to the plane - was damaged as well. And the wing's two fuel tanks were punctured. As fuel leaked out, a growing imbalance was created between the left and right sides of the plane, Woodward said.
The electrical power problems prevented the pilots from pumping fuel forward from tanks in the tail. The plane became tail heavy.
That may have posed the greatest risk, safety experts said. If the plane got too far out of balance, it would lose lift, stall and crash.
And then there was that incredible stream of computer messages, 54 in all, alerting them to system failures or warning of impeding failures.
One warned that a ram air turbine - a backup power supply - was about to deploy, although that never did happen, Woodward said. The message was especially worrisome because the system deploys only when main power systems are lost, he said. The smaller backup supply is able only to power vital aircraft systems.
That's "the last thing you need in that kind of situation," he said.
The pilots watched as screens filled, only to be replaced by new screenfuls of warnings, he said.
"I don't think any crew in the world would have been trained to deal with the amount of different issues this crew faced," Woodward said.
As luck would have it, there were five experienced pilots - including three captains - aboard the plane. The flight's captain, Richard de Crespigny, was being given his annual check ride - a test of his piloting skills - by another captain. That man was himself being evaluated by a third captain. There were also first and second officers, part of the normal three-pilot team.
One concentrated on flying the plane, while the others dealt with the computer alarms and made announcements to the giant planeload of passengers, some of whom said they were frantically pointing to flames streaming from the engine. Working flat out, it took 50 minutes for the pilots to prioritize and work through each of the messages - necessary steps to determine the status of the plane.
Attention since the Nov. 4 incident has focused on the Airbus 380's damaged Rolls Royce engines. As many as half of the 80 Rolls-Royce engines that power A380s, the world's largest jetliners, may need to be replaced, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said Thursday.
The 40 potentially faulty engines would need to be replaced with new engines while the fault is fixed, raising the specter of engine shortages that could delay future deliveries of the seven-story-tall superjumbo.
Qantas has grounded its fleet of six A380s.
Airplanes are supposed to be designed with redundancy so that if one part or system fails, there is still another to perform the same function. That didn't always happen in this case, safety experts say.
"The circumstances around this accident will certainly cause the regulatory authorities to take a long and hard look at a number of certification issues," said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and an expert on aircraft maintenance. 





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