eightblack

This thread is being temporarily closed, pending review and pending official comment from EK.

Zol

Emirates airline issued a statement assuring the public that no lives were at risk during an Emirates flight between Bangkok and Hong Kong on Monday, February 11.

The statement was made in response to a passenger interviewed in the UK media who claimed that a door had opened on an Emirates A380 airbus at 27,000 feet.

"At no time during the flight did one of the upper deck doors open," said an Emirates spokesperson.

"There was also no loss in cabin pressurisation at any time during the flight."
The whistling heard by the passenger was caused by a small difference between the inflated door and the lower frame striker plate when the door was closed. Blankets were placed around the door to stop the whistling.

"This is currently under investigation in conjunction with Airbus," said the spokesperson. "Emirates have now fixed the problem."

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-n...s-did-not-open

Yahillwe

People and the news media especially the DM over exaggerate. Common sense dictates that if the door opened then lots of people would have been sucked out sin e every passenger landed safely at their destination then blame the DM for the hyper ness. Hype sells newspapers.

thomastuyaerts

I do not believe it is a strong article in the DM, but then again, seeing pictures of a door of a A380 covered up with towels and blankets is also not "normal" standards on a brand new, high tech plane!" I believe that the truth is lying somewhere in the middle. When the cabin crew are "stuffing" the doors, something was not 100% conform with a standard door procedures.


Safe travels everyone

TT

tomnativenewyorker

As an aircraft(military) technician, I would suspect that there is a door seal that inflates after the door is closed. I would venture to guess that the seal may have been misshapen, punctured or torn and not making a complete seal. If you dont have a complete seal, you may have a slight loss of cabin pressure but not enough where the environmental control systems couldnt keep up with. The sounds may be dramatic, but I think there is a lot of over exaggeration by the original article.

aster

Are you sure? I'm looking at some photos and the doors seem to open to the outside.

daisymay2

I was delayed in December for 5 hours MAN-DXB because of a faulty rear door in Y - they had to offload 39 pax and baggage.
Maybe a problem with the A380 though probably one offs.

DYKWIA

I'm not sure, but they normally come inwards first.

Joe_EK

I was on a DXB-JED flight last year on the A380 in J and a similar (probably) thing happened.

The load in J was light and they moved all the pax from the rear cabin up to the front. I asked the FA what the problem was and was told that ''there was a slight noise disturbance, nothing to worry about.''

Another FA did have a slightly more worried look.

But I heard nothing, saw nothing, and we were about to descend at the time so actually forgot about this incident.

torontoflyer

I had the same problem on a flight (a380) from JFK-DXB last month. It was a very loud "buzzing sound" which came on right after some very heavy turbulence (the sound was like a stuck motor). Looking at the picture, it looks like the same door (maybe even the same aircraft). Blankets were put around the door, just like in the picture, and the sound got less after an hour or two, and completely went off on the third hour or so.

Yes it was a bit scary, since any loud buzzing sound on a pressurized aircraft is scary, but we got home in one piece.

dranz

> But certainly doors cannot open inflight; pressurization simply does not allow it.

It depends. Most (not all) airliners use plug-type doors. As you correctly note,
they cannot open in-flight ... unless there is a major structural failure in the
door or door frame. I do not know what type of door the A380 uses.

The F100 does not use a plug-type door. To me, it was an odd engineering
decision. Dunno if any USA airlines are still operating the Big Motor Fokker.

Whenever a door seal fails; all sorts of noises are possible. The air packs will
have no trouble whatsoever keeping the cabin pressurized if a door seal fails.

aster

What kind of door would this be: http://www.flickr.com/photos/a380spotter/4725396460/

jackiedada

What was the aircraft in question? I was trying to look it up and it seemed like it was A6-EDT? Whatever fault was seem to have been repaired locally at HKG and the aircraft continued operations as normal subsequently.....

Aborn

A French Door Non?

penbrook

It happened again on EK 241 DXB-YYZ 2/18 about 2 hours into a 14 hour flight.
Cabin crew acted like they had seen it before with immediate use of blankets.
Captain told us that sound was from metal on the outside of the door and that the seal was intact. He said no safety issue but the event would be logged. Buzzing was reduced after a while but became very loud again during descent.