Originally Posted by
smala01
Hello All,
I flew LHR to HKG for the first time in the A380 CW. I was surprised to find that my laptop charger (90W) would "trip" the inseat power which i assume was due to excess power. I found the guy opposite having the same trouble with his macbook.
The official PDF states that seat power is good to 125w - can anyone confirm if this issue was limited to our aircraft or is this a known limitation to BA A380`s?
I have had no issues on the 777. If there is indeed a problem it would affect my choice of aircraft in the future.
Thanks in advance.
Dear smala01, there is a problem (although I was pooh-pooh'd by some FTers!). It occurred with my Lenovo Thinkpad (the road warrior's PC!) with a 90w charger. With the help of several CSDs I identified that I only had problems with the sockets associated with Thales IFEs (only on the 777-200s, the 14 777-200ERs (RAES and 13 VIIxs), the 777-300ERs and A380s).
I met with senior management of BA about two years ago. In April last year I got the following message from BA's In Flight Technology Manager "We met a few months back in T5 where you highlighted some issues you had with the PC Power system installed on our longhaul fleet. Since then we have worked with the suppliers and found what we believe is the root cause of the problem.
Within the seat outlet socket we have found that there is a mechanical tolerance issue with an internal microswitch which can cause the plug to not close an interlock when inserted. Due to electrical safety concerns the system was originally certified to include a safety feature before power is supplied from the socket to the plug. As the microswitch is not always being activated when a plug is inserted it results in an inconsistent source of power and in some cases not at all. It seems that the issue only affects our aircraft which have the Thales IFE system which is consistent from your experiences if I recall correctly.
The supplier involved believes they have now resolved the issue and we will be trialling some of the new sockets very soon."
This was followed in December 2014 with "The new sockets which we have trialled and are actually fitted to our newer A380 & 787 aircraft from aircraft build, we believe have solved the problem with lack of power during power plug insertion. However the problem that you describe seems to relate to an over-current condition. You clearly shouldn’t be experiencing this with a fairly regular laptop, even with a discharged battery with some 100W available."
It remains a problem on the 777s with Thales and interestingly with some A380s (contrary to the statement above I had problems with XLEG and XLEH immediately after delivery but not XLEI, XLED remains a problem but not XLEE or XLEF!). Don't know about the 787s.
Hope that gives you an idea of the situation.