A first person account of the flight deck aboard QANTAS Flight 32 after the #2 engine suffered an uncontained failure:
We didn’t have the ability to dump fuel, the fuel dumping system had failed and we were about 50 tonnes over our maximum landing weight. In the Airbus and the A380 we don’t carry performance and landing charts, we have a performance application. Putting in the ten items affecting landing performance on the initial pass, the computation failed. It gave a message saying it was unable to calculate that many failures.
A shredded engine, fuel transfer issues, loss of hydraulic power on one side and two other degraded engines with associated failure modes would make for a gripping simulation, not to mention an actual flight with pax on board. To that toxic brew add three normal crew plus two check airmen and you have the makings of a significant cockpit resource management case study: Too many cooks can spoil the broth.
They made it work, though, so good on ‘em.
Of course, it can’t have hurt that between them they had 71,000 flight hours.
Fascinating read, CAPT Lex. My favorite part might be this:
I’d be interested to see the transcript of this encouragement.
The request was probably very reserved and understated.
I speculate: “Could we have foam on the rear wheels, please? There seems to be Jet A pouring on the brakes, which are above the auto-ignition temperature. Thanks ever so much.” [Friendly hand wave and a thumbs up when the fire-fighters got close enough for the foam cannons to hit.]
Fascinating, indeed. A great report, and a great crew. I´d fly over Hell knowing those guys are in the cabin and my greatest worry would be “can I have more peanuts?”
Good read. Me thinks they need to reconfigure that performance landing application…and maybe stick a chart somewhere in reach.
This site has a rundown of the damage including CAD drawing and close up photos:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2010/11/17/the-anatomy-of-the-airbus-a380-qf32-near-disaster/
Couldn’t reproduce in the sim. An odd similarity to United 232 where Capt. Haynes was faced with multiple failures and was aided by a deadheading UAL pilot. Lots of experience on that flight deck too, and they managed to save half the passengers. They could never reproduce any sort of survivable outcome in the sim.
Australian transportation Safety Board preliminary report:
http://atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2010/aair/ao-2010-089.aspx
Question from a non-pilot: The account said they were overloaded with system problem messages and they handled them one-by-one. Is there a system to make sure higher priority messages are listed first, so they don’t concentrate on Message One about low tire pressures when Message 10 says the engine just fell off? You may recall a crash west of Miami years ago in which pilots, distracted by an errant warning light, let their jet fly into the swamp.
ICAWs – Integrated Caution and Warnings come in 4 varieties. Green messages are normal ops. Blue are normal ops advisory. Amber messages are caution. Red are the system failure messages. Prioritize by color.
Discussions with the family physics prof/old pilot brought a large dose of “WTF??” in regards to this ACCIDENT, the aircrew response, A380 systems design and re-ignited my own questions about EASA certification.
“The more they overtech the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”
LCDR Montgomery Scott
In software development a common phrase often heard when dealing with unforeseen problems that trace back to design issues is ‘and the REAL WTF is….’.
In this account the real WTF is “Part of the damage caused Engines 1 & 4 to go into a ‘degraded’ mode. The engines were still operating and Engine 3 was the only engine that was operating normally.”
I thought airliners were designed to contain a serious engine failure, so its a WTF if an engine failure causes holes to punched in the wing and degrade the other engine on that side.
But the real WTF is how a failure of #2, even an uncontained engine explosion, could degrade engine #4, way out on the other wing!!
I thought airliners were designed to contain a serious engine failure
The engines are designed to contain turbine blades separating from the turbine disc. They are specifically NOT designed to contain a turbine disc fragmenting, has the energy involved is too high.
But the real WTF is how a failure of #2, … could degrade engine #4
Quotes are from the preliminary report
I think that the engines had full power available, but some of the higher-end control functions were not available. 1 & 4 were set to provide symmetric thrust for landing, and 3 was used to control speed.
Three disc fragments struck the aircraft (design requirements are to handle a single strike).
“Good on ‘em…” Agreed, Lex.
Wow, great stuff by this crew.
Even in the most complex aircraft, with an unprecedented casualty, the basics still apply…stay calm, work the problem(s) and fly the plane (up to and including an hour on the ground if you have to).
BTW- I’m guessing the crew passed their check ride, right?
Extremely skill-full and EXTREMELY lucky. And as the old saying goes, we know which one it’s better to be. Superior skill was certainly a *necessary* precondition for survival, but somehow I don’t think it was, by itself alone, totally *sufficient.*
Computers are pretty handy, especially a “performance application” that figures out aerodynamic landing profiles. But how can that ever be a substitute for weight and balance charts? Quaggas (and Airbus) ought to re-learn that lesson of always having a low-tech backup for bad situations. A gripping sim indeed – and if I didn’t have my PCL I would have failed no matter how skilled a flyer I was.