Interesting illustrated interview with Captain David Evans who was a check Captain on the jumpseat of QF32. There are some frightening pictures of the instrument panel showing the huge list of alerts on the MFD that took the five crew two hours to work through. It also shows that only number 3 engine was on full power. 2 was dead and 1 and 3 were operating in degraded mode.
The latest insider rumour is that the aircraft is a write-off due to damage to a spar but to protect Qantas's reputation for never having lost an aircraft Airbus will buy it back from them before writing it off.
Versions of this 'insider' info have been floating about for a few weeks now but they're basically the same. It seems like for once, the media got caught out by under emphasising just how severe the damage was!
poor sods can never get it right Dave... Damned if Damned if not
I saw the list of failures a month, long and disconcerting to say the lest. I was very suprised to learn the vertical tail has a fuel cell in it.
And not being able to transfer fuel, the planes COG was way off!
On thing about QANTAS , they have never crashed Is their claim to fame , isn't it or is it never losing a plane.
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Last edited by airboatr on 11 Dec 2010, 01:16, edited 1 time in total.
but I've never heard of one in the vertical stabilizer
Not sure about airliners but I know the Tornado has a fuel cell in the vertical stabiliser, bit of a rush to get the suppression system fitted prior to the first Gulf war apparently...
I could kinda see one in the Tornado, but how big is it? Comparatively, it'd have to be no more than what, 60 or 70 gallons? That's not too bad.
Anyway, I looked at the Tech Documents, and confirmed that the "Trim Tank" is in the horizontal stab and is pretty big (a bit over 6,000 gallons worth).
speedbird591 wrote: ...Qantas's reputation for never having lost an aircraft...
Qantas have never lost a jet aircraft, nor have there been any fatalities in incidents involving jets.
In the early days, they had their share of fatal crashes, but from memory the only major incident post WWII was a Connie wrecked in Mauritius, with no fatalities.
