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Airbus A350 Engine Shutdown Incidents Linked to Cockpit Drink Spills
Airbus and Rolls-Royce are investigating two incidents in which A350s experienced uncommanded in-flight engine shutdown after drinks were spilled on controls situated on the cockpit centre pedestal. (www.flightglobal.com) Altro...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
.....well, that sounds like a problem/solution thing.........
Flying the A350? NO SOUP FOR YOU!!
When I first heard of this incident, “Fate is the Hunter” immediately came to mind.
So the Cost of putting the Aircraft down someplace ? and the Passengers who have to be inconvenienced plus all sorts of other factors involved too ? and all because the flight crew could NOT be more careful with their drinks ??? Wonder IF they were given a talking to by their Chief Pilot ? I was always taught at flight school....IF it can happen ? then it will.
For me, this brought to mind the crash of Eastern flight 401 (an L-1011) in Dec 1972 on a night approach to MIA. It went down in the Everglades. As I recall, unable to confirm that all three gear were down, they went around for another approach while the flight engineer climbed down to physically check the suspect gear mechanism. Meanwhile, the autopilot had been disengaged (inadvertently?) and by the time they realized they were too low, the attempt to quickly regain altitude was too late. There were survivors, but many lives were lost. The cause of the initial problem was determined to be a burnt out indicator bulb caused most likely by spilled coffee in the cockpit. As usual though, several factors combined to cause this disaster. A book came out of this, as well as a TV movie, with Ernest Borgnine as a member of the flight crew.
Remembrance of things past. 1980 New Year at Athis Mons (Paris) ATC center. A major telecom control rack was disabled, due to spillage of seawater from an oysters basket. The electronics engineer on duty left celebration, used plain water and dry cloth and when all was in order again, shared raw oysters with controllers. 40 years ago electronic devices were quite fragile but easy to maintain.