http://www.ifdg.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=14298

just thought u guys would like to read this

QUOTE(Flight International)
British Airways A319 loses all flight displays at night

Flight International online news 1020: UK investigators are trying to establish the reasons why a British Airways Airbus A319 suffered a serious loss of electrical power last month shortly after departing from London Heathrow at night.

The aircraft, G-EUOB, was eight minutes into the flight to Budapest at about 19:26, and nearing FL200, when there was “an audible clunk” noise, several electrical systems ceased to operate, and the cockpit became dark.

Among the electrical systems which failed were the primary flight displays and navigation displays on both the captain’s and first officer’s instrument panels. The crew also lost the upper electronic centralised aircraft monitor (ECAM) display, the autopilot and auto-thrust, intercom and general flight-deck lighting.

An attempted ‘Mayday’ transmission was not received by air traffic controllers because the aircraft’s radio was no longer powered. The highly experienced captain maintained aircraft attitude by the external horizon and standby instruments. Investigators believe the standby horizon was probably “not powered or lighted” and in any case should have remained usable for only another five minutes.

In a special bulletin on the 22 October incident the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) states that the aircraft remained in the “degraded condition” for about two minutes.

After carrying out ECAM procedures the crew managed to restore the primary flight instruments and most other capabilities, including air-ground communication, although a number of other less-important systems remained inoperative.

Following a 40min hold for further checks the aircraft was cleared to continue to Budapest, where it landed safely. There were no injuries among the 76 passengers and six crew.

Maintenance engineers reset all the affected systems and the aircraft – a four-year old example registered G-EUOB, with International Aero Engines V2500 powerplants – remained in operation for another six days with no reported electric problems.

The AAIB became aware of the event only through the crew’s mandatory occurrence report and the aircraft was then taken out of service for further inspection under AAIB supervision. Integrity checks on the electrical power system and checks on the engine pylons’ integrated drive generator feed connectors yielded nothing unusual. Before the aircraft was returned to service inspectors removed several components including the three display management computers, a generator control unit, a system data acquisition concentrator unit and a flight warning computer.

Investigators are still carrying out studies into the incident, in co-operation with Airbus and British Airways, and expect to publish a more detailed report once their work is complete.



QUOTE(Flight International Blog)
British Airways' cool characters

It takes a lot to impress British Airways. Losing all your flight instruments at night, for example, hardly merits a mention. Respect!

So, in this story an A319 crew is climbing out of Heathrow on a clear night when suddenly everything goes dark. No flight instruments at all, a standby horizon that it seems almost certainly wasn't illuminated, working, and just the external horizon to fly by. No radios either.

Unsurprisingly the captain, aged 53, with 11,800 total hours and 4,000 on-type, coped serenely. When the power equally mysteriously returned after a couple of minutes, he spent 40 minutes in the hold fruitlessly investigating the problem and then pressed on to Budapest.

In Hungary, BA's engineers failed to find a fault and cheerfully put the aircraft back into service. The pilots duly filed a mandatory occurrence report and life carried on much as usual.

When the MOR landed at the CAA however the reaction was less relaxed. Not long after it was at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, and not long after that the aircraft was grounded with Farnborough's finest climbing all over the avionics.

I doubt that my mortal flesh is ever in safer hands than when it's securely inside a BA aircraft, and particularly with a 12,000 hour, silver-templed veteran guiding us through the skies - night or otherwise. But I think there will be some debate over this one.

An Airbus loses electrical power... arent they fly by wire?? Maybe only some are. But still, that is just one more reason I call those planes SCAREbus. Full marks to the pilot though. That is an impressive feat reguardless of the plane.

The Scotsman was Here!

Yep, Airbus, some Boeings, are fly by wire. They do have many reduntant systems to prevent total loss of control. What is much more scary to me is drive by wire cars. A whole bunch of cars out there already have throttle by wire and we will start seeing cars with drive by wire. With the likes of Ford and Dodge making these things, well, I'm scared for my life.

As far as everything going out in the flight deck, it all turned out O.K. If everything would have stayed off, well thats a problem. A 747-400 or any Airbus above the 300 would be a very interesting landging in the dark.

From my point of view, if I'm flying at night and I loose power and it comes back after a few minutes my first reaction would be...get that **** on the ground ASAP!

It is totally irresponsible that they decided to pursue on course to their destination. From what I know they had passengers under their responsability. At some point I am wondering if "Making Money" now rules over the logical safety decision in the western airline copanies. We have seen the consequences with Alaskan Airlines about 10 years ago.

Thats absolutely indefensible, somebodies head should roll for allowing the flight to continue
and doubly so for keeping the aircraft in service.
No doubt in my mind that money was the prime motivator in this turn off events, coupled perhaps with a over-confident pilot, It is ultimately his decision to continue flying an impaired aircraft
so he needs to be sacked for starters...100+lives
shouldnt be ****ed with like that

Well...the aircraft was already almost at 20,000', so they were going to be in the air for a while no matter what. Returning the aircraft to service, on the other hand, is a big no-no since it represents a safety-of-flight issue. The aircraft needs to be flown on a few maintenance flights with no passengers since there is always a reason for things like this happening, and it WILL happen again. I'm betting they're going to find a broken wire or pushed pin at one of the bulkhead connectors that only shows itself at a specific pressure differential.

quote:

Originally posted by Ivan-the-Taff:
Thats absolutely indefensible, somebodies head should roll for allowing the flight to continue
and doubly so for keeping the aircraft in service.
No doubt in my mind that money was the prime motivator in this turn off events, coupled perhaps with a over-confident pilot, It is ultimately his decision to continue flying an impaired aircraft
so he needs to be sacked for starters...100+lives
shouldnt be ****ed with like that

I think we need to bare in mind that the captain of an aircraft has a legal responsibility for his passengers. That captain probably had a family of his own and am in no doubt that if he had been in any doubt of the safety of the aircraft, he would have diverted. I do find it odd that he tried to declare a "mayday" and then continued on to Budapest!! But, I am sure that he convinced himself that the aircraft was safely flying. All Airbus aircraft have a back up conventional system to back up their fly-by-wire systems and therefore I doubt that it could cause an immediate issue, however, loosing radar contact and TCAS over London during the night is not always a good idea...

The question is, could he have continued to fly and make an emergency landing without instruments (Imagine how it would be if it was a foggy morning)?
This may indicate a design flaw in the back-up systems. I don't trust Airbusses less, because they get me from a to b just as well as the Boeings, even though my only real in-flight 'emergency' was an engine stall (relight after 5 min) on an A300-B2 (It had a flight deck with 4 CRT MFDs), and yes it was before the 'omg we are sooo hysteric about terrorism and the whole world has to be too' thing. And that was a 'manual' jet...

Again, I have to wonder, what does everybody think the pilot is going to be able to do at 20,000'? It took the aircraft a while to get there, and it takes it a while to get back down. Last time I checked, Europe isn't a very big place and the destination airport was probably just as close as any other for a safe descent. Rapidly descending toward the ground is probably the last thing you want to do when you have lost electrical power. So, all the pilot could do is begin his descent to land the aircraft at an airport which is at an appropriate distance, and hopefully do a little troubleshooting and trying to rectify the problem on his way there. Any IFR-capable aircraft with electronically driven primary flight instruments MUST be equipped with a pneumatic altimeter and airspeed indicator, along with a stand-by attitude indicator of some type.

Okay, me being from Europe has nothing to do with this, but 'Europe' isn't that small Iguana, and the distance from Heathrow to Budapest is something like 1700km (1000-something miles :P). Guesstimating that by the time the A319 got up to 20k ft. It would have travelled 50km from the airport. Okay, with a pattern turn it would bring it like 80km out. Even it they decided to go in a straight line to Budapest, wouldn't it be much safer to divert to Schiphol or Brussels?

Guess it was some ex-RAF pilot who was willing to take the risk and was used to such things happening.
What about the standby pneumatical systems? I mean if the power was gone, what was driving the vacuum pumps and all the nice color displays to show those readings? I know a battery is probably the main power source in such situations, but with all the extra electronics eating up amps...

Oh, another interesting question, in an engine failure scenario, would the crew attempt to start the APU, or just continue on the hydraulic reserve and deploy the RAT? Oh wait, perhaps the APU generator lacks the power to drive all the hydraulic systems.

That's still pretty small.

The pilot should be commended for not freezing up and/or making a panic decision in that situation. There are no pumps of any kind and no electrical power needed to run pneumatic altimeters and airspeed indicators. They are purely mechanical devices with an aneroid or diaphragm which drives a needle on an analog display. Their pneumatic sources are the static ports and pitot tubes, which are driven by outside conditions. Standby attitude indicators are usually capable of being run by an EPS (Emergency Power Supply), which is basically just a bank of batteries, in rack-mount form, which are tasked just with running the gyro and lights on that important indicator. Making an emergency diversion or landing without first attempting to rectify any instrument discrepancies can be worse than running for the nearest airport. I know of at least one pilot who, due to weather conditions which iced up some of his external sensors, found himself flying an aircraft with 3 different altitude sources (one being GPS), with one of them reading SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the other two. He immediately declared an emergency and attempted an emergency landing at a nearby airport in Montana. He chose the wrong instrument to trust and crashed into the side of a mountain. That's why its important for a pilot to keep a cool head and stay at a safe altitude until he has at least attempted to work out what is actually going on. Its a judgment call...he made the right call.