The great big "ask an airline pilot" thread!

smurfjed

engine was shut down by choice and for no other reason than to conserve fuel.

Interesting concept to save fuel, are you sure that it works? Switching off the PACKS i can understand, but the engine?

smurfjed

LeftBase

smurfjed wrote: »

Interesting concept to save fuel, are you sure that it works? Switching off the PACKS i can understand, but the engine?

smurfjed

I think I phrased that wrong. I meant landing to conserve fuel not shutting the engine down.

Flier

LeftBase wrote: »

Sounds to me as if they may have encountered stronger headwinds than expected and perhaps were going to dip too close to company/legal minimums. I cant see them just not taking enough fuel for the flight.

If this was the case then it would not make avherald or anything like that if the aircraft landed above final reserve and the engine was shut down by choice and for no other reason than to conserve fuel. It is simply a diversion and not really an incident.

An in flight engine shutdown, for whatever reason is an incident. So is departing with less than flight plan fuel.
@brandon_flowers: Try the CAA website - should be a link to incident reports - you can usually find it by date.

smurfjed

Left base, with an engine out, the cruise altitude will decrease and the speed will be changed to engine out long range cruise, so reduction in speed, increase in fuel burn per engine and you end up with shorter endurance. Look back at the BA 744 from LAX to LHR as an example.

Smurfjed

eatmyshorts

Flier wrote: »

.. for whatever reason is an incident. So is departing with less than flight plan fuel....

Sure? I've departed with less than flight plan fuel after an extended taxi delay and a couple of trips to the deicing bay.
Taxi and contingency gone and eating into trip + alt + final reserve. Just stopped Enroute for a top up and continued.

brandon_flowers

All I know is an engine was definitely shutdown and we spent almost 24 hours in Singapore while the problem was being fixed which leads me to believe there was a problem with the engine rather than a problem with fuel. The pilot didn't explicitly say he lied about the fuel shortage over the intercom but he had completely changed his story after we landed.

I have searched the CAA and the AAIB but nothing is showing up.

Flier

eatmyshorts wrote: »

Sure? I've departed with less than flight plan fuel after an extended taxi delay and a couple of trips to the deicing bay.
Taxi and contingency gone and eating into trip + alt + final reserve. Just stopped Enroute for a top up and continued.

Look at your legal definition of 'departure'. Once you pushback and start engines with flight plan fuel, you are legal, even if you spend 3 hours taxiing around. So, yeah, I'm sure.

eatmyshorts

Flier wrote: »

Look at your legal definition of 'departure'. Once you pushback and start engines with flight plan fuel, you are legal, even if you spend 3 hours taxiing around. So, yeah, I'm sure.

It was your use of the word "departure" instead of "dispatch" that threw me there!

For us, departure is defined as pushback, whereas dispatch occurs at engineer dismissal.

Suasdaguna1

You can not "knowingly" depart with less than flight plan fuel......and then scrape in at destination on fumes......eatmyshorts has it in one....a tech stop en route. For heavies it's a different story, dropping in en route say going from JFK to FRA is a non runner. Requires an over weight landing at YHZ/YYT/YYR which in turn requires qualified maintenance to sign same off........better just to go back on stand and fuel up. JFK is the one airport that can grind to a halt re taxi delays in inclement weather.....I have heard a few times the call by ATC, "gentlemen shut down your engines ".......in these scenarios one is well upto speed re forecast weather and fuels accordingly. Single engine taxi procedures are very common for twins and save a bucket of fuel if things are looking tight.

Just my 2c

guttenberg

Speaking of fuel, have you ever been delayed due to difficulties of getting fuel on board? A few years ago I got a flight from Manchester, 30 minutes after deprt time before we boarded. Turned out the plane wasn't correctly parked for the fuel truck to refuel(it wasn't a tanker, it connected one end of a hose to well in the ground, other end to plane, pipe wasn't long enough to reach so operator had to manoeuvre truck to various positions to try get it to stretch- not a simple procedure.) From my seat you could see how flustered he was getting before he managed to line up correctly. Was it just a one off or is it a common issue at airports with that refuelling setup? It was funny to watch!:D

LeftBase

smurfjed wrote: »

Left base, with an engine out, the cruise altitude will decrease and the speed will be changed to engine out long range cruise, so reduction in speed, increase in fuel burn per engine and you end up with shorter endurance. Look back at the BA 744 from LAX to LHR as an example.

Smurfjed

I know that. I phrased my original response incorrectly. I intended to suggest they landed to conserve what fuel they had(and so not run out), not that they shut the engine down to conserve fuel.

eatmyshorts

Suasdaguna1 wrote: »

..a tech stop en route. For heavies it's a different story, dropping in en route say going from JFK to FRA is a non runner. Requires an over weight landing at YHZ/YYT/YYR which in turn requires qualified maintenance to sign same off........better just to go back on stand and fuel up.

Just my 2c

Unless you've got enough to drop into SNN, DUB, MAN, AMS, LHR etc on the other side of the pond and be landing under MLW.

Suasdaguna1

smurfjed wrote: »

We do it all the time, its called re-dispatch or re-release :) The aircraft departs without sufficient legal fuel to get to the scheduled destination.

smurfjed

Jezuz, brave man saying that in public.

Flier

smurfjed wrote: »

We do it all the time, its called re-dispatch or re-release :) The aircraft departs without sufficient legal fuel to get to the scheduled destination.

smurfjed

smurfjed wrote: »

Why? very common procedure and perfectly legal.

smurfjed

Guys, get out the text books again.

When we're talking legalese here, there's no 'for us it means...'. It means the same for all of us.

Smurfjed, what you're taking about is in flight replanning: You will have filed a plan for a destination that you have sufficient fuel to reach, with all the legal reserves etc. That destination is never your intended destination (ie it's not where the pax think they're going), but legally it is where you are flight planned to. Enroute, you recalculate your fuel, and find that you can now make the destination where the pax think they're going, so you refile for that destination (or your company does on your behalf). Everything is legal, and you don't lose your licence.

You cannot legally depart with less than flight plan fuel. You can check with the IAA if you don't believe me, but I wouldn't give them your name or licence number!

smurfjed

Flier, sometimes I post things to see the response. But i see your point about confusing people, so I have deleted the previous posts.

As I went in a tangent and posted about the concept of redispatch, rerelease or inflight replanning (all the same things but different names). I will leave the explanation.

Talking about the B744, for a flight operate to New York it requires about 120,000 of trip fuel, plus the requirement to have 10% trip fuel, holding and alternate.

The 10% fuel is about 10,000 kgs as it can be based on the lowest fuel burn rather than the average. This is a lot of additional fuel to carry, so in order to reduce it, re-dispatch/re-release concepts (note the FAA terms) are used. The aircraft takes off with legal fuel to go to Gander, it doesn't have the required fuel for New York, your explanation of flight replanning takes place about 80% along the route to New York, lets say with 2 hours to go, the contingency fuel is therefore only required from that point to New York. Lets say 10% of 2hours x 10,000 kg/ph or 2,000 kgs. Fuel saving is now 8,000 kgs.

In the older 747's, this was the difference between getting to New York non-stop, or stopping en-route. This concept can also be used as a legal method of reducing the required fuel load, so it would save fuel and also reduce emissions. So it can also be used on a non fuel/payload critical route.

For the original poster about the 744, it is highly unlikely, nee impossible that a BA flight would take off without the required fuel to get to the destination, either if they planned on doing it directly or by using the inflight redispatch as above. But in the event of an inflight shut down, it is quite possible that at the redispatch point they didn't have the required fuel to continue to Bangkok, or they calculated that they wouldn't have had legal reserves on arrival in Bangkok, so a diversion into a huge airport such as Singapore offers more options for passengers and fixing the aircraft.

smurfjed

Flier

That old thing uses a lot of fuel, I was considering posting an explanation, but using an example of about 50 tons!! Anyway, glad to hear that you know what's going on, it just worries me a bit that others will read your (original) post and think they can fly around illegally!

elmolesto

Shouldn't flight data be sent in real time to a recorder on the ground so if a plane's black boxes can not be found, the data is available anyway?

We have the technology to do this.

What are your thoughts?

Are there any experiment being made?

smurfjed

Quick Answer, the transmission costs are too high, so it wont be done unless required by regulation.

smurfjed

Rabbitt

Sorry if this is kind of off topic but I hope someone may shed some light on the following

Last summer on a Ryanair flight in to Manchester we had to abort the landing . This was at the very last second before touching down( I'd say we were no more that 15 feet from ground)we shot back up and hung a very sharp right.
The pilot said this was due to another aircraft coming on to the runway .

Where could I get more info on this incident as it seemed to me a very close call .

Thanks in advance

Flier

elmolesto wrote: »

Shouldn't flight data be sent in real time to a recorder on the ground so if a plane's black boxes can not be found, the data is available anyway?

We have the technology to do this.

What are your thoughts?

Are there any experiment being made?

Some companies use their ACARS system to downlink some technical data back to their maintenance base.

Flier

smurfjed wrote: »

Flier, sometimes I post things to see the response. But i see your point about confusing people, so I have deleted the previous posts.

As I went in a tangent and posted about the concept of redispatch, rerelease or inflight replanning (all the same things but different names). I will leave the explanation.

Aw Smurfjed, I didn't mean you to take down the post! It's an interesting example of how a word can change everything. Tbh, it's a bit more worrying that some pilots feel that they can have an inflight engine shutdown and not report it as an incident....
Nice explanation btw

LeftBase

Flier wrote: »

Aw Smurfjed, I didn't mean you to take down the post! It's an interesting example of how a word can change everything. Tbh, it's a bit more worrying that some pilots feel that they can have an inflight engine shutdown and not report it as an incident....
Nice explanation btw

If you are flying a 737 or A320 and you shut an engine down mid-flight that is an issue however on a 4 engine aircraft it is less of an issue.

LeftBase

Rabbitt wrote: »

Sorry if this is kind of off topic but I hope someone may shed some light on the following

Last summer on a Ryanair flight in to Manchester we had to abort the landing . This was at the very last second before touching down( I'd say we were no more that 15 feet from ground)we shot back up and hung a very sharp right.
The pilot said this was due to another aircraft coming on to the runway .

Where could I get more info on this incident as it seemed to me a very close call .

Thanks in advance

A go around will be called even if an aircraft over runs the hold short marker. They don't actually have to "enter the runway". Some airports have a system that alerts the tower of an over run and they can order an abort.
The sharp right was most likely due to the fact that you cannot overfly an aircraft on the ground below a certain altitude.

smurfjed

The sharp right was most likely due to the fact that you cannot overfly an aircraft on the ground below a certain altitude.

Would you please expand on this statement please? Where does it come from?

smurfjed

eatmyshorts

LeftBase wrote: »

The sharp right was most likely due to the fact that you cannot overfly an aircraft on the ground below a certain altitude.

Or simply in order that the missed approach track diverges from the parallel departure runway.

Growler!!!

If my memory is correct g/a in MAN is rwy hdg to 750ft then right turn 358°. (≈110° turn)

That's from rwy 23R. If they are using both rwys you don't want to be turning into departing A/C from 23L.

smurfjed

Usually when you fly into a controlled airport, the Air Traffic Services give you altitudes and speed instructions, or they are published on the STAR (Published approach procedure) Sometimes, ATS hold you at a higher altitude that you would like, this happened to us last week, we needed to turn left from the airway to the initial approach fix, but because of outbound traffic, ATS held us on the airway at quite high, we finally got cleared to approach fix, but lets say that the distance and height to lose weren't optimum, this is where knowledge of your aircraft comes in handy and applying tricks like extending flaps but maintaining a higher than normal speed for that configuration will increase your rate of descent without any noticeable changes for the passengers to observe, or worst case, we have wonderful speed brakes, but these cause noise and vibration, so we try not to use them. We have height/speed/configuration/navigation gates during the approach, so its not just a case of getting everything right just before landing, the whole approach from the gates has to be within the allowed parameters. But this is one of the reasons why this job is awesome, as a standard approach into an airport that we have used thousands of times, turns into an exciting 10 minutes

Another place that i love going to is uncontrolled airports, these are airports without radar coverage and in most cases no tower controllers. I'm going to one of those tomorrow morning, once again its a regular airport for us, but in my case i haven't been there in about 6 months, so its time to take out the Jeppesen charts and "chair flying" the approach. Once we descend below FL150 we are on our own, so we get plan our speeds and required altitudes. For this airport the Grid Mora is 12700 feet, the MOCA is 11800 and the MSA 7500, as we operate under TERPS rather than PANOPS, we can only use the MSA in an Emergency. From the airway we will join a DME ARC, so the first task is to measure the length of the DME ARC, it will be 12 nms followed by a 14 mile approach, so 26 miles from the start of the ARC to touchdown, 26/3 = 8.5 so we can normally lose 8500 feet during the approach, plus the airport elevation of 3,900 feet gives us a planned altitude of 12,400 for joining the ARC. The MOCA for the airway is 11800 feet and with our direction of travel, it means that we can descend to 13000 feet and level off, or 11800 feet provided that we don't level off, we can also account for the buffer zone for the DME ARC and start descending with 4 nms of the ARC. The published procedure is for us to enter the ARC at 250 kts, then 40 degrees before the inbound radial show down to 200 and add Flaps, at 20 degrees before the inbound radial we slow down again and then turn to intercept the ILS approach.

In the glass cockpit world, this is all a lot easier than it probably sounds, with triple IRS's and a couple of GPS's, the autopilot will follow the lateral path precisely, as will set altitude and speeds constraints, the autopilot will also follow that. It's an awful lot easier than when i had to do this in a Seneca for my Instrument Rating

smurfjed

Flier

LeftBase wrote: »

If you are flying a 737 or A320 and you shut an engine down mid-flight that is an issue however on a 4 engine aircraft it is less of an issue.

You could argue that in a decent powered twin, a simple engine flameout isn't much of an 'issue', however,
regardless of how many engines you start out with, a shutdown is an incident and is required to be reported.

eatmyshorts

Flier wrote: »

You could argue that in a decent powered twin, a simple engine flameout isn't much of an 'issue', however,
regardless of how many engines you start out with, a shutdown is an incident and is required to be reported.

Especially if you're regularly flying around at 207 mins ETOPS.

eatmyshorts

@smurfjed...any chance it was you in the Ankara FIR today looking for a climb to 450? Gulfstream HZ- something.