Incident: ANA B773 over Russia on Jul 20th 2010, fuel leak

[CrankyBastard]

From here http://www.avherald.com


An ANA All Nippon Airways Boeing 777-300, registration JA778A performing flight NH-202 (dep Jul 19th) from London Heathrow,EN (UK) to Tokyo Narita (Japan) with 249 passengers and 17 crew, was enroute overhead Russia about half way into the flight when the crew noticed the left hand wing tank's quantity dropped slightly faster than the right hand wing tank's quantity. The crew decided to continue the flight towards Japan permanentely monitoring fuel reserves. During the descent towards Tokyo's Narita Airport about 24 minutes prior to estimated landing the crew needed to shut the left hand engine (GE90) down due to depletion of the left hand fuel tank. The airplane continued for a safe single engine landing in Narita.

ANA reported, that maintenance found a fuel pipe in the left hand engine leaking traces of fuel. An investigation is underway.


Not the sort of thing to relax my nerves a few days before flying this same route with ANA!!

[Tsuru]

Must say that given the choice I'd rather continue to Japan limping on one engine than face the prospect of having to spend a couple of nights in a hotel in the likes of Norilsk or Irkutsk. If it was a flight over the pacific you wouldn't even have had a choice.

There is a reason these aircraft are fitted with two donkeys and are certified to fly for up to six hours on just either one without breaking a sweat.

[Coligny]

Must say that given the choice I'd rather continue to Japan limping on one engine than face the prospect of having to spend a couple of nights in a hotel in the likes of Norilsk or Irkutsk. If it was a flight over the pacific you wouldn't even have had a choice.

There is a reason these aircraft are fitted with two donkeys and are certified to fly for up to six hours on just either one without breaking a sweat.

Yeah we all (well, some of us at least) know that all aircrafts are build with extensive over-engineering (who would put a 70' era Mercobenz to shame)... But these safety are here to help when shit hit the fan, not to assure that the plane schedule will be respected. (we know that for japanese being late is a reason to commit suppuku, but i'm talking -real-world-people here).
Those dorks flew for hours with a fuel leak... I inherited my grand'pa stuckup attitude toward safety. Once he got a car with a leaky fuel tank. Once he saw the level was going down to fast. He stop on the side to check, saw the leak. Locked the door and took a taxi. The carmaker (he bought directly from them since he was chief of body and paint quality control for their main factory) had to go and fetch it for repair.

Is it safe to fly on one engine... over land in a friendly airspace... yes.
Is it safe to do it with a fuel leak in an unknown location somewhere inside the wing. Maybe not as much... I don't know what the manual say in this case. But i'm pretty sure it's not "Do as if everything was normal and if you run out of fuel proceed with 1 engine". Shutting down the engine, to check if he was reason for the leak, and restarting it before landing to help in case of touch and go would have sounded much safer...

[Kagetsu]

Maybe to balance the plane they may have run it at idle, and on touch down (if an emergency was declared) they may have shutdown at the last minute to avoid any fires if the problem was greater then a fuel leak. I'm pretty sure (citation needed) the engines are fed from any tank the pilot choses to.

Personally I think it's just poor reporting, plus if it was genuinely a problem, they would have landed it at the closest available airport.

[IkemenTommy]

Not the sort of thing to relax my nerves a few days before flying this same route with ANA!!

You might want to consider changing your flight..

Golfer Ishikawa Ryo from his return from the Open Championship experienced a fuel leak on the same ANA flight the day before.

[CrankyBastard]

Oh! Shitttttttt!

[Coligny]

You might want to consider changing your flight..

Golfer Ishikawa Ryo from his return from the Open Championship experienced a fuel leak on the same ANA flight the day before.

If it also wuz the same plane... avoiding that carrier would sound like a minimum in the safety dept...

[Iraira]

Hey Cranky...weather report says severe thunderstorms and high winds over eastern Russia.....been nice knowing yah.

[Coligny]

Hey Cranky...weather report says severe thunderstorms and high winds over eastern Russia.....been nice knowing yah.

Cranky, if you crash, I can haz your Microwave oven ?

[Tsuru]

Yeah we all (well, some of us at least) know that all aircrafts are build with extensive over-engineering (who would put a 70' era Mercobenz to shame)... But these safety are here to help when shit hit the fan, not to assure that the plane schedule will be respected. (we know that for japanese being late is a reason to commit suppuku, but i'm talking -real-world-people here).
Those dorks flew for hours with a fuel leak... I inherited my grand'pa stuckup attitude toward safety. Once he got a car with a leaky fuel tank. Once he saw the level was going down to fast. He stop on the side to check, saw the leak. Locked the door and took a taxi. The carmaker (he bought directly from them since he was chief of body and paint quality control for their main factory) had to go and fetch it for repair.

Is it safe to fly on one engine... over land in a friendly airspace... yes.
Is it safe to do it with a fuel leak in an unknown location somewhere inside the wing. Maybe not as much... I don't know what the manual say in this case. But i'm pretty sure it's not "Do as if everything was normal and if you run out of fuel proceed with 1 engine". Shutting down the engine, to check if he was reason for the leak, and restarting it before landing to help in case of touch and go would have sounded much safer...

I did fly a 777 simulator before and in doing so I managed to find out a little bit about how much power it still has if only one engine remains and how many redundancies are available to the crew. There are plenty of ways in flight to find out the answer to the big question, namely whether the leak is only on one side. If it is, all you have to do is keep the crossfeed valves firmly shut to isolate the fuel tank with the leak and you should be good. Planes like the 777 are built to do everything single engine... take off and climb out if one donkey fails right at V1, cruise, land, go around and land again... everything except take off from a standstill (though theoretically it can be done at low to medium weights).

Even considering that, I don't think any rules were broken. Here's why: The rules say they should have gone to their enroute alternate if they had an emergency, which losing one engine on a twin is. Remember that the engine on the leak side failed only 24 minutes prior to their destination (likely already inside Japanese airspace), and it is likely that their destination of Tokyo was the closest of all alternate airfields they had for this flight. Also remember that descent from cruise flight level to landing usually takes around a good 15 minutes just to lose altitude and the article even says that the engine failed during descent, so I don't think at any time anyone was in any sort of danger. No reason to change schedules at the last minute.

But you know what they say in journalism, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[FG Lurker]

Golfer Ishikawa Ryo from his return from the Open Championship experienced a fuel leak on the same ANA flight the day before.

That's the same flight on the same day -- ie same story, different link.

[Coligny]

[quote="FG Lurker"]That's the same flight on the same day -- ie same story, different link. ]

With the number of passenger on a 777 you can make the headlines on this until at lest next year...

[Mock Cockpit]

Don't worry Cranky, that route will be getting the brand new 777s. In October.
Tsuru- do you know if the pilots even declared an emergency?

[Tsuru]

They would have had to... losing 50% or more of your engines is an emergency.

[Greji]

They would have had to... losing 50% or more of your engines is an emergency.

Roger on the emergency, but with fanjets, 50% isn't bad. It's that "or more" that can really wear you out!