13901

No probs! I’m frankly surprised that the spanner is still flying the route. I understand that sometimes it’s hard to find someone locally - Air Seychelles has shrunk to minimum, no other airline flies 787s I believe - but it’s odd that BA hasn’t got an OSE based there. Perhaps it’s due to accommodation, I hear it’s expensive down in SEZ. I do remember BA having a 767 engineer on rotation in Almaty back when they were flying the route...

flatlander

When I look at the amount of trouble Norwegian went through to get parts to Iran when one of their Boeings had an engine failure and diverted there, I am not surprised that BA would go to some lengths to avoid having to try to ship any spare parts to Iran. The over-reach of the US government is long and clammy.

MarkFlies

I was reminded of that too. Did they ever get the plane out?

IFE Wizard

I spent four years as a flying engineer, one with Lufthansa, two with Air France and one with BA. I was employed by a major supplier of IFE equipment to observe and assess the IFE system on board these airlines. No carrying of spanners for me as I was not allowed to physically repair systems during flight but could assist the crew with either individual seat or full system reboots.

The system was new and receiving a lot of reported failures which could not be replicated on the ground.

I would be flying long haul most days with just overnight stops either at the home base or at the final destination. I flew just over 1 million miles during this period. It was great to see the world in “bite size” visits and gave me a chance to list a number of places worth a full visit at a later date.

GaxxyFlyer

I flew into TBT (Tabatinga (Brazil but on the Colombian and Peruvian boarder)) on the one and only flight a day. The front row was taken up by the ground crew to service the plane at the far end. Fascinating part of the world by the way.

flatlander

Yes. It took them over two months: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...y-arrives-home

Long enough to make you think of loading a flying spanner to/from Iran and not to divert to Iran on an overflight unless you really, really have to.

rapidex

Unfortunatel the Boeing checklist for the B737 series sais land at the nearest suitable airport in the case of an engine failure.

There is a Smartwings case ongoing where the Crew did not do that, and heads have rolled already.

flatlander

Indeed it does say that, but is "will be stuck for weeks" "suitable" ? I know the operations definitions, but the crew should not have that doubt in their mind when the airport is, absent imperial political over-reach, quite suitable in aviation terms.

International political squabbles do not improve flight safety - not just with this example of parts, but in places where immigration authorities can be very hostile to unannounced arrivals (including not showing up for hours even though it is a port of entry, like in some USA airports, causing passengers to be detained uncomfortably for a long time).

The Smartwings crew were clearly doing something quite reckless, passing over or near a number of European countries with no repair, immigration, or other issues to discourage diversion.

Ancient Observer

BA fly an accountant with the Engineer. To make sure s/he does not spend any of BAs money.

tuonopepper

I flew Finnair A350 HEL/LHR a couple of months back, we were delayed leaving HEL as they needed an engineer to go home and get his passport so he could fly to LHR to fix another AY frMe that had gone tech... Made me wonder if it was BS given the BA engineering presence I assume AY have access to at LHR.

BOH

Reminds me of a flight I took on a very elderly Air Europe 747-100 in 1989 (I checked and the registration indicated it was the 5th 747 to be ever produced). During the boarding process there was an Engineer with a tool belt, ie screwdriver, pliers, spanner, hammer etc and he was very busy fixing broken seats, the audio system - yes it was one of those air tube IFE systems with the stethoscope style headphones

The flight was delayed 18 hours due to a technical fault (no surprise) and the next day on the take off roll, as we hit a bit of a bump in the LGW runway about a dozen oxygen masks fell down out of the overheads in front Once the seatbelt sign was off, to our surprise the same Engineer (almost an odd-job handyman I suppose) was still on the flight and he replaced the fallen masks up into the ceiling and was also busy the whole flight fixing various things. At one point my whole row of 3 had to stand up for 15 minutes or so whilst he scrabbled round under the seats fixing something to do with the seat fixings. A memorable flight, the 741s did not have the non-stop range to fly to BKK so we refueled in Bahrain both ways. "Back in the day"......

cargueiro

One used to fly on the LAD route when BA operated the 787 there before cancelling the route.

As the 787 is pretty much all electric and requires a more stable GPU than most aircraft, I think the engineer travels with the 787 to stations which lack highly competent third party engineering teams.