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Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

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21–30 of 152 posts

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#21

> The passengers report they are still on board of the aircraft about 2 hours after landing because the airport does not have stairs to accommodate the A380. Does anybody know how this works? Why not just use any old ladder?

Risk to the passengers. If there is no imminent risk then it is better to wait for the right device than to risk passengers falling off ladders from 10 meters and higher, the A380 is a huge plane and those doors are pretty high up.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#22

> The passengers report they are still on board of the aircraft about 2 hours after landing because the airport does not have stairs to accommodate the A380. Does anybody know how this works? Why not just use any old ladder?

My guess? Liability.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#23

Seriously lucky that the disintegration didn't take out vital hydraulics or fuel systems in the wing, or penetrate the pressurised fuselage. I'd like to hope that this wasn't caused by ground crew error, i.e. an improperly secured cowling or access hatch, which snowballed into major component failure...

The plane flew for 2 more hours before was able to land.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#24
post #9

This screams of poor servicing.

It does? How can you conclude that without having inspected the missing parts? It could be a manufacturing defect, it could be all kinds of other things including a design flaw, to conclude that it 'screams of bad servicing' without having any evidence on an incident that is not even a day old is jumping to conclusions.

"Screams of x" is an educated guess, not a conclusion.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#25
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does? How can you conclude that without having inspected the missing parts? It could be a manufacturing defect, it could be all kinds of other things including a design flaw, to conclude that it 'screams of bad servicing' without having any evidence on an incident that is not even a day old is jumping to conclusions.

"Screams of x" is an educated guess, not a conclusion.

An educated guess is something entirely different than throwing out the first thing that comes to mind in a complex situation. Evidence, not guesses is where it is at.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#26

> The passengers report they are still on board of the aircraft about 2 hours after landing because the airport does not have stairs to accommodate the A380. Does anybody know how this works? Why not just use any old ladder?

Risk to the passengers. If there is no imminent risk then it is better to wait for the right device than to risk passengers falling off ladders from 10 meters and higher, the A380 is a huge plane and those doors are pretty high up.

The A380 is high enough that the ladders (technically airstairs) available probably couldn't even reach the doors.

http://www.tips.si/pdf/Door-Sill-Heights-Passenger-Stairs-24...

Interestingly enough, an A330/340 can be even higher, but only slightly (~30cm).

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#29
post #9

This screams of poor servicing.

Typically, fan blades failing are due to metallurgical defects during manufacturing. Not sure where you are getting poor servicing from.

The conclusion of United Airlines Flight 232 was that although it was a manufacturing defect, the maintenance crew should have noticed the crack. Normally, cracks slowly spread over time until the part catastrophically fails, giving you time to catch it using various techniques (ultrasound, x-ray, penetrating dyes).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#30
It's amazing to me that modern aircraft engineering is so good that an engine can lose its fan blade entirely at 35000 feet and the plane can still continue on for 2 hours and safely land. An uncontained failure like this is the worst kind, and I know it could have gone worse, but it didn't and that amazes me.

I wonder if the cowling contained the initial disintegration but was removed in the process. I'm not an engineer, but from the way that looks and the fact that nothing flew off and did further damage makes me at least wonder if that's what happened.

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