Tag Archives: B744

It’s not easy to slow down a heavy B744 Jumbo after a high and fast approach….

I had almost forgotten this picture of the Boeing 747-400 A6-HRM I photographed in Paris Le Bourget airport on Oct. 2, 2010, while visiting the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace. The aircraft is not only interesting for being a private “Jumbo” owned by the Dubai Royal Family and used for VIP transportation, but it is noteworthy for being the plane involved in the lucky journey of a stowaway passenger hidden inside the gear bay during a flight from Vienna to London. On Jun. 9, 2010, a 20 year old Romanian, who wanted to go the UK to find a job, was able to climb in the wheel well of the aircraft and to survive until the arrival just because the aircraft, that encountered thunderstorms after departure, could not climb to the planned cruising level and to level off at about 25.000, where temperature and lack of oxygen didn’t kill him. Usually, stowaway passengers don’t survive this kind of trips.

The recent Qantas B747-400 engine failure that compelled the QF74 on Aug. 31, 2010, to land only 41 minutes after departure from San Francisco (with destination Sydney), has already made the news. Unlike other minor failures occuring almost daily everywhere, an uncontained failure (that is quite different from an engine explosion….), is somehow rare, but not a big deal (if there’s no damage to the wing or fuselage caused by a separated engine part), especially if happening in the vicinity of the departure airport. Now have a look at the route followed by the aircraft from departure to landing taken from FlightAware.com:

The route clearly shows that upon experiencing the n.4 engine failure, flying at FL300, some 270NM to the West of San Francisco, the QF74 headed back to SFO and, instead of proceeding directly to landing, it performed a couple of 360s to dump fuel. Someone asked why the pilot did not proceed straight towards the airport after loosing one engine (out of 4…) but I think that there’s nothing weird on such a behaviour: as the aircraft can fly safely also with a single engine (in particular circumstances…), it is safer to land the heavy plane (with 212 passengers) after loosing some thousands lbs of fuel. Indeed, much interestingly, the pilot did not (at least until the very last part of the flight) declare emergency (even if most news reports didn’t mention this detail or mistakenly stated that the flight had declared emergency) as the aircraft could be safely flown back on the remaining engines.

The analysis of the ATC recording is quite interesting: QF74 first call to the radar is to request descent to FL200. When requested if a vector back to San Francisco was needed, the pilot replies with a “stand by”, followed, minutes later by a request for radar vectors back to KSFO. Fuel dumping was performed from FL200, eastbound, then the aircraft was cleared to descend to 10.000 at pilot’s discrection (even if the aircraft maintaned FL200 and later “moved” on RAINS waypoint to continue its holding/fuel dumping).

Interestingly, a replacement engine was carried (as 5th engine) by QF73, Qantas B747-400 “VH-OJQ”, on Sept. 1.

Some videos taken with mobile phones from the passenger cabin of the aircraft can be found on the Internet.

The following article, published by the Sydney Morning Herald, on Sept. 2, 2010, provides some details dealing with airworthiness directives issued for the RR RB211 engines fitted to the QF B744 aircraft focusing on possible uncontained engine failures.

Qantas engine explosion followed safety warning
Andrew Heasley and Matt O’Sullivan
September 2, 2010

THE Qantas jet engine that exploded on Tuesday after take-off from San Francisco had not been inspected after safety warnings issued two weeks ago.

The safety bulletins in Australia, Europe and the US had warned of ”uncontained” engine failure – the technical term for when components are sprayed out of the engine enclosure during a malfunction.

The airworthiness directives were issued for Rolls-Royce RB211 engines, the model fitted to the Qantas 747-400 that was forced to make an emergency landing at San Francisco.
A Qantsa jet was forced to turn back to San Francisco after a hole was blown in the shell of the engine.

Qantas confirmed the jumbo’s engines had not been inspected because it was not due for its regular maintenance checks. The engine that failed was last inspected on July 8. Some of the 212 passengers on QF74 reported seeing flames and sparks fly out of the plane’s fourth engine about 20 minutes after take-off.

The explosion ripped a hole through the engine’s cowling, causing the aircraft to shudder and requiring the pilots to dump fuel before making the emergency landing.

One passenger recalled seeing flames ”like a giant Roman candle stick” shooting towards the back of the aircraft from the failed fourth engine.

Another passenger panicked and yelled, ”We’re going to go down, we’re going to go down’,” but most handled the emergency calmly. Those who were not able to cope were ushered to the front of the aircraft.

Kirk Willcox, from Randwick, was seated in a row near the wing when he ”suddenly heard a loud pop and a swish” as the fourth engine caught fire.

”We knew we had not hit turbulence,” he said.

”We made a bit of a skid to the left, got the wobbles and then dropped in altitude.

”The girl I was sitting next to said, ‘the engine is on fire’, and I looked out and saw what looked like a giant Roman candlestick.

”It varied in intensity and was quite extraordinary.”

The airworthiness directive warned that ”several low pressure turbine shafts had been found with cracks originating from the rear cooling air holes”.

Qantas said that it was ”fully compliant” with the airworthiness directive, which required that the engine be inspected the next time it was due for maintenance.

A replacement engine has been flown to San Francisco.

The following pictures were taken by Andrea El Dabh (whose site can be visited at the link https://sites.google.com/site/aereiedintorni/) at around 17.00LT on May 5, 2010 while he was boarding a Ryanair flight. The images show a quite unusual visitor at Ciampino airport, the B747-400 “9K-ADE”. The same aircraft, along with a State of Kuwait A-320 had visited Malpensa on May 2, 2010.

I have already discussed the “long line of incidents” that in the last two years has posed a risk to the famous Qantas safety record. More or less two years ago I wrote an article titled “Qantas electric failures” commenting two occurrences of two subsequent losses of electrical power experienced by two Qantas B747-400s. One of the aircraft was flying from London to Bangkok as QF2 and the other one from Singapore to Melbourne as QF10, and I noticed that I had travelled with both of them a few months earlier. QF10 had some problems once again on Dec. 18, 2009, when it was forced to return to Singapore after experiencing an engine fire shortly after departure.
The following Sydney Morning Herald article provides some more details about the last emergency:

Qantas flight turns back after ‘flames from engine’
THOMAS HUNTER
December 18, 2009

Qantas passengers on board a flight that turned back shortly after leaving Singapore have described seeing “tongues of fire” coming from one of the 747 jumbo jet’s engines.

Flight QF10 was on its way to Melbourne carrying 354 passengers when the incident occurred.

Dylan Brady, 38, was returning to Melbourne after visiting Singapore on business when the plane “convulsed and lost power”.

“[My business partner and I] both thought something had fallen off the bottom, or the landing gear had come undone,” he said.

“Then we saw this orange light and we both looked out the window to see fire coming out of the back of the jet. It was pretty scary.”

Mr Brady said the flames lasted about 10 seconds, while the whole incident was over in about 25 seconds. He said the passengers knew something had happened but stayed calm, and the captain quickly informed them he had shut the engine down.

“When he shut the engine off, obviously everything was OK, the plane slowed down a little bit and then he sort of pulled gently and slowly to the left to get out of the flight path because the plane behind us was only a minute and half behind and still going full speed,” he said.

On its return to Singapore, Mr Brady said the plane was directed to its own runway which was lined with fire engines and emergency crews.

“To Qantas’s credit, by the time the plane got back to the ground they had hotels for everybody. It was pretty well organised. There were some conniptions when the business class passengers got their luggage and economy didn’t … I didn’t notice anyone who was ridiculously disgruntled.”

Another passenger, Steve Tanoto, described the shock “tongues of fire on the rightmost engine … in the middle of the night”.

The airline this morning confirmed a “mechanical fault” forced the jet back to Singapore soon after it took off last night.

A passenger who contacted Traveller reported flames coming from an engine 25 minutes after the jet took off from Singapore’s Changi Airport at 8.53pm, local time (11.53pm Melbourne time).

The plane landed safely and Qantas engineers are believed to be examining the aircraft.

The spokeswoman said pilots announced to passengers that the jet had developed a problem and they were shutting down the No.4 engine.

There was no panic among passengers, the spokeswoman said, as the pilots carried out “an air turn back” and returned to Singapore.

“There was no smoke or fire in the cabin, according to official reports, and at no stage was the safety of any of the passengers at risk,” the spokeswoman said.

Asked if the cabin crew reported smoke and flames from the failed engine, she said “there was no report of that, none at all”.

Passengers were take by bus accommodation for an expected 23-hour delay while the airline arranged a replacement 747 to fly passengers to Melbourne.

The incident is the latest in a long line of incidents to affect the trouble-plagued airline.

In July last year an oxygen gas bottle exploded mid-flight, ripping a hole in the side of a Qantas jet above the South China Sea.

A final report is expected next year. The explosion happened on a Hong Kong-Melbourne flight, carrying 369 people. No one was seriously hurt.

In October 2008 a computer glitch caused a Qantas Airbus to plunge twice in quick succession on its way from Singapore to Perth, injuring more than 100 people.

Meanwhile, industrial action at Qantas by professional engineers had no impact on services, an airline spokesman said yesterday. Alison Rose from the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers said yesterday’s action was designed to not inconvenience the public over Christmas.

If the dispute was not resolved she said passengers travelling next month may be affected.