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Pilots reveal death-defying ordeal as engines failed

 
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megatop747
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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2015 5:27 pm    Post subject: Pilots reveal death-defying ordeal as engines failed Reply with quote

IT WAS A BRIGHT spring afternoon over the South China Sea, about 50 nautical miles from Hong Kong, when what began as a problematic but manageable flight from Surabaya turned into a life-or-death emergency. There had been some fluctuations, or misfirings, in both engines – particularly in engine No 2 (that to the pilots’ left) – as the plane climbed out of Indonesia’s second-largest city on the morning of April 13, 2010. Two hours into the flight, there were more fluctuations in engine No 2.

On both occasions, the pilots radioed Cathay Pacific engineers in Hong Kong, who advised them it was safe to continue the flight as all the other vital signs from the engines appeared normal. The A330 is designed to fly comfortably on one engine and there was no inkling yet of the chaos the contaminated fuel would cause.

But some 110 nautical miles short of Hong Kong, the situation worsened. The pilots received a message from the onboard computer saying engine No 2 had stalled. They set engine No 1 to maximum thrust and requested a priority landing.

Then, as the plane flew at 8,000 feet some 45 nautical miles southeast of Hong Kong, a stall message was received for engine No 1 – meaning that while the engines were still ticking over, neither was producing any thrust.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” says Waters, from Jamberoo, New South Wales, in Australia. “I thought, ‘It must be the original engine that’s giving us an issue. It must be the same message again’. My gut reaction was that we could end up ditching in the sea.”

A year earlier, US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger had made world headlines by landing a passenger plane safely on the flat waters of the Hudson River in New York after a double bird strike shortly after take-off.

“I looked out of the window and I looked at the state of the sea and I thought, ‘That’s not the Hudson’,” says Waters, of the choppy conditions below. The aircraft was already too low to glide to the airport.

“There are procedures for losing all engines at high altitude and we had practised that, but in our case … the engines were not working very late in the game, only 15 minutes from landing,” says Waters. “We were at 8,000 metres. We weren’t at 40,000 feet with 40 minutes of gliding time.

We only had six or seven minutes at most before we were at sea level.”

The plane sank from 8,000 to 5,000 feet in three or four minutes of gliding.

“Initially, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” Waters says. “Then you realise what the issue is. Then the realisation of what could happen strikes you and, I suppose, what you feel is fear.

“You know this is a dangerous situation and you always train for situations like this as a pilot. But a flight simulator cannot replicate the real threat. You go into the simulator knowing you are going to have fires and other situations and that you will be tested on your ability to handle them but, at the end of the day, you are not going to lose your life in a simulator. You can’t simulate the ‘startle’ factor.”

Co-pilot Hayhoe, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Sydney, says, “I felt a sense of disbelief. I spent a long time in the military undertaking much more adventurous flights. I certainly didn’t think that by coming to an airline anything like this would present itself.

“I couldn’t believe I had been in the military all those years and now I was going to put an airliner in the water.

“Then I started thinking, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something about it.

How do we dig ourselves out of this situation? How do we not hit the water and, if we do hit the water, how do we do it properly, to give us the best chance of getting the best result?’” Waters took the plane off automatic pilot as the two pilots declared a Mayday.

“I found comfort in the fact that I had something to do. You put one foot in front of another and once you do that you are in a place you’ve been before,” says Waters.

Source http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1491534/pilots-reveal-death-defying-ordeal-engines-failed-approach
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