FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Qantas A380 in Emergency Landing - Engine Problems [Fleet temporarily grounded]
Old Nov 14, 2010 | 3:48 am
  #72  
Waterhorse
All eyes on you!
15 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 2,232
A380 Engine Failure Issues

Here are some of the problems thrown at the crew of the QF A380 that suffered an uncontained engine failure.

* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11 tanks,

including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)

* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank

* a hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body

through

* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer

functions

* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above

* bloody great hole in the upper wing surface

* partial failure of leading edge slats

* partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers

* shrapnel damage to the flaps

* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (beast has 2 x

5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)

* manual extension of landing gear

* loss of 1 generator and associated systems

* loss of brake anti-skid system

* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after landing

due to major damage to systems

* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using using the fire switch!!!!!!!!

Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the

explosion in #2

* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on left

side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding

* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major CofG

out-of-balance condition for landing.
- fire bottles didn't work
- the uncontained failure sheared the wiring loom to #1 engine which rendered it uncontrollable and in degraded mode (hence pouring foam into it on the ground to try and shut it down)
- fuel leak from 2 tanks, jettison & XFR unavailable
- 52 ECAM warnings plus 12 status messages which took 5 crew 48 mins to process
- no LE slats, antiskid, green system (yellow off #3 only), A/T (#1 engine uncontrollable, #2 AWOL, #3 ok and #4 bizarrely operating in degraded mode having lost both its hydraulic pumps), satphone or radios apart from VHF 1
- wing gear brakes accumulator only (burst 7 tyres on landing)
- Vref of 165kts (performance manually calculated as the computer couldn't cope with that many failures)
And finally

The cabin crew went into therapy, the pilots went to the pub.
Waterhorse is offline