* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11ECAM is the "Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor".
tanks, including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)
* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank
* a hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body through
* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel
transfer functions
* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above
* bloody great hole in the upper wing surface
* partial failure of leading edge slats
* partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers
* shrapnel damage to the flaps
* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (beast has 2
x 5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)
* manual extension of landing gear
* loss of 1 generator and associated systems
* loss of brake anti-skid system
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after
landing due to major damage to systems
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using using the fire
switch. Therefore, no fire protection was available for that
engine after the explosion in #2
* #2 engine fire protection system was disabled
* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on
left side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding
* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major
CofG out-of-balance condition for landing
* left wing spar damaged
You can see the stains of fuel leaking from the tanks in this photo:
There were five pilots on the QANTAS flight; three were the normal crew (pilot co-pilot, relief pilot) and there were two additional pilots for line checks. All five were busy handling the emergency. I've heard that during some emergencies on Airbus aircraft, the ECAM can generate so many warnings that a two-pilot crew cannot keep up with them.
Word around the aviation community is that damage from the explosion cut the controls to the #1 engine, which was operating at or near full-power. #1 engine could not be shut down after landing; firefighters trained their hoses on the intake of the engine and shut it down by flooding it with water. This photo shows water streaming into #1 engine, though neither the photographer or the editors recognized what the photo showed. (That's not a slam at them; one would have to be pretty familiar with aviation to understand why it was necessary to flood an apparently undamaged jet engine with water.)
Because it was generating power, the flight and data recorders kept running. The flight recorder only records a set period of sounds, overwriting as it goes, so the initial audio from when the engine shelled itself was lost.
Large airliners maintain their center of gravity during long flights by transferring fuel. Having the CG out of limits does nasty things to the effectiveness of the controls.
One engine blown to bits, one engine screaming at full power, aircraft overweight for landing, half of the hydraulics out and the crew landed it with no additional damage and no casualties. That's a pretty good bit of flying.
8 comments:
I'll take a Grumman Yankee, any day. Sure, it can't cross an ocean... but that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
I did my first solo in a TR-2, so I have a bit of a soft spot for the craft.
Haven't flown once since, though.
Strange. Shutting down all electricity should have stopped the fuel pumps and thus the engine.
I don't get the water method.
The engine had its own generator, so it was powering its fuel pump.
They threw enough water into it to quench the combustion chamber.
That's one of those incidents where if the pilots in charge had been even the slightest bit less competent, you would have had something more similar to Flight 3407... sad to say, those kinds of pilots are becoming scarcer and scarcer because they're more expensive than some green pilot just out of pilot school who'll work for the same wages as a McDonalds fry cook...
Just another reason why I am...
Badtux the Flightless Penguin
Here's a picture of the flight deck. Dayum, that thing's got more gear in the cockpit than the server room at work!
Heh. Flight decks are looking more and more like a nerd's workstation, and certain kinds of nerds are working hard to make their home rig look more and more like a jet fighter's cockpit.
The water method is the reason the B737 has a warning on the control panel mandating a minimum thrust level in precipitation.
TACA 110 had both its engines flameout in 1988 and had to land on a New Orleans levee when it penetrated a Level 4 thunderstorm. The resultant investigation found that the FAA's standards for certification were inadequate to prevent flameout in heavy rain and mandated a warning placard on the panel.
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