Mandatory hat wearing is a different thing. I get that. But when they are optional it’s a tell tale sign of a long trip.
Boeing down in India
- Thread starter Mr.BR
- Start date
Just added to the pile of knowns, as generally maintenance records are brought up in these situations.
I have learned something here, when I get on an airplane if anybody in cock pit is wearing a hat I’ve got a rip on them.
So not a pilot or an aircraft guy but what are the odds it was fuel related? Could bad fuel cause enough of a loss of thrust to result in the crash?
I’ve been on a boat that got bad fuel and after an hour of running it plugged the filters bad enough that it forced us to shut the engines down and change the filters before it would let us do anything more than idle. Could such a thing happen on a plane or do the system make it a highly unlikely occurrence?
I’ve been on a boat that got bad fuel and after an hour of running it plugged the filters bad enough that it forced us to shut the engines down and change the filters before it would let us do anything more than idle. Could such a thing happen on a plane or do the system make it a highly unlikely occurrence?
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Possible but very highly unlikely…every truck load in and out of every storage tank is tested, and it may have changed but when I was flying almost every load on the plane has a small sample pulled to check for contaminants.
Plus, other planes would have been affected. I haven't seen any reports of that.
Could have been a fuel system failure though, likely pilot error if so…so many fail safes and redundancies built in.
I have problems with that.
The engines gravity feed at 150% with the high pressure pumps in the engine and that is a manufacturing spec required by the Feds under Part 23/25 (IIRC)
Both high pressure pumps failing at the same time? Extremely unlikely.
Well an aircraft is not a boat. There are filters in the fuel system that can be bypassed automatically due to contamination.
Much like the bypass valve on your car's oil filter. Can do it for a short amount of time but not recommended.
Fuel contamination in turbine aircraft is more about water and water freezing in the fuel line at altitude.
A turbine/jet engine can burn water. I saw an engineering video a few yrs back and was surprised about how much water a turbine engine can ingest and still keep running. Its a lot
Now if the contamination was a solid, that is another ball of wax.
Could it be fuel contamination? Possibly.
Maybe, maybe not. I could have been one fuel truck that was affected.
I haven't been through that area in a few yrs but I don't believe they have in-ground fueling.
Fuel trucks tend to come in the 10,000 gal and 50,000 gal flavor.
The 787 burns in the neighborhood of 12,500 lbs /hr. or roughly 1,865 lbs per hour.
Its roughly a 9 hr flt (plus 1 hr reserves) so the fuel on board would be in the neighborhood of 18,650 lbs
This is all napkin math.
So it could have been one or two truck that did the fuel uplift.
You forgot to factor in the India effect.
Lying and cheating is way of life there.
Never forget the one day they "forgot" how to refuel a 747 even though multiple 74 came through there daily.
Short story, I got on the ladder and refueled my own 74.
Yep, I was thinking in terms of in ground fueling, hadn't even thought about lack thereof/trucks.
You wanna take another look at your fourth line above ? I think you may have made a typo. Looking at your expression of "lbs/hr". Maybe it's just me, but I don't get what you are trying to say. "12,500 lbs/hr. or roughly 1,865 lbs per hour". I get what you mean on your fifth line.
As above, water in the fuel is not a problem and happens fairly frequently.
The main problem with water contamination is it can lead to the biological growth which can either block fuel filters, or worse cause corrosion in the tanks.
The aircraft is smart enough to know if the fuel filters are getting clogged and would've sent an alert to GE and/or Air India.
If it was simple fuel starvation you'd have thought it would've happened during take off, well before it got into the air.
It could be a freak event like what happened to flight BA38, but obviously not the same as icing is unlikely to have occurred.
The main problem with water contamination is it can lead to the biological growth which can either block fuel filters, or worse cause corrosion in the tanks.
The aircraft is smart enough to know if the fuel filters are getting clogged and would've sent an alert to GE and/or Air India.
If it was simple fuel starvation you'd have thought it would've happened during take off, well before it got into the air.
It could be a freak event like what happened to flight BA38, but obviously not the same as icing is unlikely to have occurred.
The earlier reports of electric issues, no a/c and the rat deployed leans towards a serious electric issue. But I've not heard anything that could take out both engines, especially since they have their own power redundancy.
Without knowing the exact specifics of the 787, is there someway that a pilot could induce a configuration where it attempted a takeoff with the center tank feeding both engines and there was a subsequent failure of the center tank system? Or do the wings always feed the engines and the center fuel is transferred to the wings.
I’m still on flap camp though for now but the RAT deployment gives me pause.
Which is why I personally think this is gonna fall back on Indian air maintenance, or lack there of. Pushing an aircraft through with a known squawk not fixed properly.
Kinda like lion air on the 737 max. That aircraft on the prior flight was doing the same thing that caused it to crash and it wasn’t fixed. Instead, everyone dog piled Boeing.
So, you are going to write off the pilots calling over the radio loss of power?
