“We Can’t Control the ENGINES!” The Nightmare of Cathay flight 780

[Applause] [Music] this Airbus A330 is on Final Approach but something is seriously wrong too low in the cockpit the pilots are fighting for their lives to try and slow the king aircraft down and what has caused this situation is Stranger than you would ever believe stay tuned accidents happen for a variety of reasons but in almost every case the root cause can be traced back to something very benign maybe a small mistake that someone makes sometimes weeks or even months before the accident that initial mistake is then always followed by several others allowing established safety barriers to be crossed in what we now know as Dr re's swiss cheese model this is why to be able to fully understand any accident or incident we have to go back to the very first thing that put the ball in Motion in this story that means going back to 2001 to the planning of an extension to the apron on Janda suraya airport in Indonesia the original plan was for 10 aircraft stands which are basically parking spaces for aircraft to be built next to the existing stands on the airport but to start with only stands 5 to 10 had actually been completed the remaining four stands were to be constructed at the latest stage so that last bit of land next to the apron was left unpaved until a need to expand would eventually rise meanwhile stand 5 to 10 were fitted with what's known as fuel hydrant basically a grid of underground fuel pipes leading up to each stand this system enables the aircraft fuelers to just hook up a pump car to the hydrant and then start pumping fuel directly from a centralized tank instead of having to haul the fuel around in huge fuel trucks this is very common in larger airport especially at stands where larger L haul aircraft ought to be refueled since they generally need enormous amounts of fuel now the pump trucks which are used to complete refueling fill several important functions obviously they provide the pressure needed to suck the fuel from the hydrant and then push it into the aircraft but they also incorporate a couple of fuel filters which acts as the last barrier to fuel contamination before the fuel enters into the aircraft tanks the fuel is pumped through these filters and the pressure differential between the intake of the filter and the output must be closely monitored since any increase in that differential pressure might indicate some type of fuel contamination from the system so what type of fuel contaminations can exist then well there is obviously a large variety but the most common one is water which can enter into the system in various different ways either as free water from condensation inside the tanks or an outside Source or as water solved in the fuel itself which can break out as free water when the temperature of the fuel changes if there is water contamination this can then lead to further microbiological contamination in the fuel like fungi or algae kind of like the inside of a dirty swimming pool on top of that there can of course also be other forms of dirt pieces of rust from pipe in and other small contaminants so these filters are super important but how will a filter be able to catch water you might ask well that's a great question and it will introduce you to one of the big villains in this episode called super absorbent polymers or sap for short part of the filters inside of the pump trucks has a layered filled with these little polymers and their job is to attract any water content in the fuel and then absorb it when that happens the sap powder turns into a type of gel and it effectively stops the fuel from continuing to run through the filter increasing the differential pressure a lot and therefore giving a clear indication that the fuel is contaminated this by the way is the same type of polymers that you can find in some variants of diapers anyway about a month before the accident flight cath flight 780 was scheduled to depart the work to complete those remaining four stands had finally started the weather was miserable During the period with rain almost every day and before the concrete could be laid on the new apron the piping for the new fuel hydrant needed to be completed this included some quite elaborate welding work and great care was taken when placing the new tubes out and then connecting them to the already existing piping for nearby stands 5 to 10 now the suraya airport is situated quite close to the Sea and the closest regulating pool constructed to control the water levels around the airport was only 300 M away from the work site and it was mainly containing sea water as the work continued in the pouring rain pools of salt water therefore started to build up inside of the work area all of the stands with hydrons connected to the work area had of course been turned off and sealed as the work was going on and before day and the new hydrant could be reconnected the fuel company pamina who was in charge of all of the fueling on the airport had to flush the whole system clean using fuel after that flushing was then completed the Indonesian civil aviation authorities GCA had to come in and expect and finally approve the installation before it was allowed to be used again now the flushing of the system was eventually done on the 9th of April to the best of pina's ability but without any real guidance for how to do it and how much fuel they had to use after the flushing the pamina crew who had been conducting the work assumed that since the circuit from Stand 1 to 10 had now been opened and flushed it could safely be used again even though the final inspection had not been completed and it looks like at some point during the construction and piping work some salt water must have entered into the system and it had not been properly flushed out before the hydrons were connected again this brings us to the 12th of April 2010 which was the day before the accident flight on this day another aircraft from Cassy Pacific was operating out of suraya and had uplifted fuel from the hydrant at stand number six off the departure and during the cruise phase towards their destination the pilots of this flight noticed some FL uations on their engine parameter specifically on engine number one but they didn't receive any Associated warnings and the engine seemed to be continuing to work well they continued to their destination and reported these fluctuations to the maintenance engineers and the engineers had a look at it and they decided to change the fuel metering unit which is the unit that effectively controls the fuel input into the engine after the fmu was replaced the engine worked fine so no further tests were conducted and no one connected this issue with the fuel uplift in suraya airport the following day on the 13th of April a crew consisting of two pilots and 11 cabin crew were scheduled to operate cath Pacific flight 780 from suraya to Hong Kong they had arrived from Hong Kong the previous night on the same aircraft and had now enjoyed a nice night stop before they were supposed to return back to their base again the homebound flight was scheduled at 8:20 local time so the crew arrived to the airport and started a pre-flight briefing about an hour before for that at 720 the captain of the flight was reasonably young only 35 years old but had already amassed over 7,700 hours of Total time and 2,600 of those had been flown on the aircraft they were now going to operate the Airbus A330 he was joined by a 37-year-old first officer who was also reasonably experienced with just over 4,000 hours of Total time and 1,171 of those flown on the 330 he had only been working for 3 years for k at that time and and before that he had flown 11 years in the Royal Australian Air Force the two pilots started their pre-flight briefing by checking through the log book which they were already quite familiar with since they had operated the same aircraft on the day before the aircraft was a 12-year-old Airbus A330 342 with two giant Trent 700 turbofan engines fitted to it it had no technical faults recorded in the log book and had worked perfectly on the previous day so they were quite confident with it they then proceeded to check the weather and nooms for the 6-hour long flight they had ahead of them and everything looked reasonably well with only a few thunderstorms around the route and possibly a bit of crosswind in Hong Kong later on but everything was well within their comfort zone They decided that the first officer was going to be P of flying for the flight and then the captain walked over to the cabin crew and proceeded to brief them about the flight the cabin crew they were also really experienced they were led by an inflight service manager who was supported by one senior person three three Junior purses and six Junior cabin crew since there was nothing special expected during the flight The Briefing was concluded relatively quickly and they then proceeded out to the aircraft which was now being made ready for refueling at stand number eight the pilots had decided to uplift 24,400 kilos for a total departure fuel of 33,400 and when the captain started his walk around he saw that the fueler was doing a fuel quality check so he walked over to have a look at it for himself a fuel quality check is made by taking a fuel sample Downstream of the pump car's fuel filter and then visually verify that it's clear and doesn't contain an visible contaminants or free water the fuel sample that was taken looked great so the captain happily continued his walk around as the fuel started uplifting the fuel but just a few minutes into the fueling the fueler noticed that the fuel Hol seem to be vibrating more than normal he knew about the recent reconnection of the underground fuel system so he assumed that there might be air bubbles in there causing the vibration just like in your kitchen faucet when the water has been turned off for a while he stopped the fueling for a few seconds and then resumed which momentarily solved the vibrations but he had to do so several times before all of the fuel was uplifted also strangely when he later checked the diff pressure around the fuel filter he noticed that it had risen a bit now he noted that down in the pump trucks log book and thought maybe it's time to change the fuel filter soon and then he continued his duties now what had actually happened here was that the remaining salt water which had been left inside of the piping had now gone into the filter where the sep particles had caught it just as they were designed to do but what was not designed was the fact that this was salt water not normal water and the salt particles attached to the sub particles causing the filter to not block up completely as it was designed instead the filter had continued to let fuel pass through but the pressure pressure inside had caused the filter to deform and for the fuel to start back flowing through the filter and bypass it through the hose and then into the aircraft that was likely the cause for those vibrations that the fueler had felt during the fueling now this wasn't great but it still wasn't supposed to be a huge deal aircraft engines are certified to be able to run with quite significant amount of fuel contamination so one broken filter should normally not have been such a big problem but what no one knew was that the now broken filter had started to produce a completely new type of contaminants which no one had calculated with and this was the sap particles themselves the fuel filters inside of the aircraft engines are graded to be able to catch all particles down to a size of around 40 micrometers and to catch around 90% of all particles between 10 and 40 but that meant that inside of the fuel that was now being uplifted was a contaminant that was to a large part smaller than even even the engine filters were able to remove this will end up having some severe consequences and I'll tell you all about those after this 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moving away from their stand the weather for departure was super nice with only some scattered clouds around very light winds and a temperature of of 28° Centigrade perfect weather for flying the aircraft tax it out to the holding position for Runway 28 whil the pilots completed the last pre-flight checks and at time 8:24 the Airbus started accelerating down the runway for takeoff the takeoff and initial climb out was completely uneventful with the first officer hand flying the aircraft to just over 1100 ft and then engaging the autopilot at this point everything looked like it was going to be a nice routine flight back to Hong Kong but deep with within the air bus's fuel system the sap spheres were now slushing around in the tanks getting closer and closer to the pumps who were sucking fuel into the engines the fuel system of the Airbus A330 comprises of several inner and outer Wing tanks and then a separate fuel tank in the horizontal stabilizer in the wing tanks collector cells are situated near the wing routs and from there the two main pump sucks fuel in and delivers it to the engines there's also a standby pump outside of the collector cell if it should be needed after the fuel has been sucked from those tanks it is then pumped via a heat exchanger used to cool the engine oil and then via the engine low pressure filter to the high pressure pump which creates enough pressure to run the subsequent fuel metering units or fmu the fmu then provides the correct amount of fuel to the engine burners now obviously there are about a million more separate components to the system but that should give you a general idea of how it looks each engine is controlled by a separate electronic engine control unit or eec which is basically a small computer that senses trust lever and out the trust input and then translates that into commands for the fmu depending on things like outside conditions engine performance and many more things inside the fmu there are several mechanical valves that are designed to keep the fuel pressure constant and to act immediately and with great Precision to the EC demands now I know we're getting quite far into system designs now but all of these things are important to fully understand what's about to happen before I stop talking technical stuff there's only one more system I want to mention and that is the system inside the engine known as the engine air flow control you see when air moves through a jet engine's core it will flow past first the low than intermediate and finally High Press compressors before entering into the burn Chambers this flow normally works perfectly at higher rotation speeds but when the engine is forced to suddenly change speed or run at lower RPMs there can be sudden changes in the pressure which can cause what's known as engine surges or stalls if it's not properly controlled engine surges are basically compressor blades stalling causing air to flow the wrong way inside of the engine and that's not great since it can cause damage to the engine and severely affect its performance now to make sure that that doesn't happen several variable State veins and bleed valves have been built into the engine compressor stages to make sure that pressure can be accurately controlled since I mentioned before that these pressure changes are directly caused by changes in engine speed these valves and veins are actuated with the help of something known as fuel draulic which is basically fuel pressure from The High Press fuel pump and that means that this system is directly connected to the function of the fuel system as the aircraft was now climbing out on its way up towards the Northeast the pilot started noticing some quite abnormal engan pressure radio fluctuations on engan number two it fluctuates around 0.015 epr and when they looked at engine number one it was also fluctuating but not as much this was a bit strange but there were no warnings associated with it and the engines were running fine so the pilots just discussed and decided to continue the flight and to tell the engineers about it when they arrived to their destination but about 33 minutes into the flight just after they had leveled off at their Cruise altitude of 39,000 ft a warning suddenly appeared on the ecam the the electronic centralized aircraft monitoring system the warning stated Engine 2 control system fault and with the sub information Engine 2 slow response but it didn't have any checklist action items for the pilots to do it was just for their information the captain immediately got into contact with Cafe maintenance control via a satellite phone in order to get some help interpreting and possibly troubleshooting the issue the engineer who took the call asked the pilots to check how the engine responded to trust lever movements and when the pilots tried to do that they could see that the engine did respond but that the epr was still fluctuating a bit around the target the engineer and Captain then continued to look through their manuals to see what could possibly be causing this without finding anything specific they also discussed the possibility of changing the engine control from epr to N1 instead but decided against it since the engine control seemed to be working fine it was just fluctuating a bit the engineers in the control center were able to monitor the engine parameters REM remotely via data link and from what they could see the engines were performing well so they advised the crew to continue to monitor the situation and call again if something else would come up based on the information they had at that point the pilots just discussed the information but agreed that they were happy to continue the flight of course what they didn't know was that the sap spheres inside of their fuel had now started to concentrate inside of the wing collector tanks and more and more of them were being sucked into the engine fuel system once they were in there they seeped through the engine filters and started depositing themselves around linkages and valves within the fuel metering units and other crucial parts of the system so what the pilots were seeing on their engine instruments was actually the result of those valves having a harder and harder time to move because of the contamination now this didn't really manifest itself as a huge problem as long as the engine speed was held more or less constant and there was very minimal movement of those valves needed but that would of course not last for very long 1 hour and 15 minutes minutes after the first warning the pilots were asked to descend from flight level 390 to 380 as they entered into the Malaysian kotak kabulo airspace and as soon as the aircraft leveled off at the new level the engine 2 control system fault ecam warning reappeared this time it was accompanied by both the information avoid rapid thrust changes and engine two slow response the pilots acknowledged the info but again there was no real items for them to complete they tried to switch on and off the engine anti to see if that would have any effect on the epr fluctuations but nothing really happened the engine still was working fine and responding to trust Lev demons now again there were no information in the manuals about what the underlying conditions for These Warnings actually were but we know that the avoid rapid thrust changes warning indicates a problem with the engine airflow control remember that's the part of the system with the variable Inlet guide veins and bleed Valves and the other warning had to do with a fuel metering unit so here we can already see how the app spheres had started to affect more and more components inside of the number two engine fuel system and of course what's inside engine number two would eventually also reach engine number one the captain now called up the maintenance control again with quite a bit more concern this time and asked them if they could see what they were seeing and if it was really safe to continue the flight this time there was another engineer who took the call who had been briefed by the situation by one of his colleagues he looked at the data again and confirmed that from their St point there was nothing alarming going on they had checked and there had been no maintenance action taking place overnight which could explain a sudden misbehaving engine and the other parameters looked similar to the first time that they had called up the engineer then had a look at the number one engine and considered that that one was working well without any real issues yeah there were some minor epr fluctuations on that side as well but he thought that that might be due to the engine trying to compensate for the fluctuations on the opposite side this by the way while being being a plausible theory is not really how these engines actually work they work by trying to keep the aircraft speed as close as possible to the required speed but not by compensating the exact trust output but he also said that the message avoid rapid trust changes was related to the variable guide vein system and that the crew should move the trust levels carefully to try to avoid any exceedances if an exceedance would happen anyway they should just follow the procedures in their manuals and in any case the fmu was going to be replaced when they reached Hong Kong to sort this issue out this explanation sounded good to the pilots who now felt more happy again to continue the flight now before anyone starts to have any opinions regarding their decision making here remember that these two pilots had no idea about all of the other things that I've already told you regarding the fuel contamination and the Airbus warning system had not been programmed to connect the dots with this either in the Pilot's eyes they had had some minor fluctuations on mainly one engine which had caused two different warnings which didn't have any action items connected to them and all of this was being monitored by their maintenance control remotely and they had deemed it safe now I would have likely taken exactly the same decision as these two pilots did if I was in their shoes and that's also what the final report ultimately said the flight continued without any further issues and about 1 hour and a half later at the time 12:55 Hong Kong time the aircraft entered into the Hong Kong fi and started coming into range for the arrival 80s the captain copied the 80s via their AAR system and it indicated that rway 07 left was in use with the wind coming from 160° at 9 knot but it was varying between 100 and 160° meaning that it could be both tail and headwind for the landing the visibility was more than 10 km with few clouds at 600 ft and Scattered clouds at 1,800 ft temperature 29° d. 24 and a q age pressure setting of 13 hectopascals but there was also a spey report added to the 80s advising of significant wind shear forecasted for both runways due to the varying winds now except for the windshield warning this was quite good weather and the first officer started preparing for an ILS approach into R 07 left he planned for a flaps full landing and after having checked the landing performance the pilots both agreed to use the low Auto Brak setting as the runway was very nice and long after the briefing they were handed over to Hong Kong radar who cleared them to follow the subot 2 Alpha standard rival route just as they had briefed and before they started The Descent the captain made a normal PA to the passengers they were done clear to initially descend the flat of a 230 and this is where things really started to get interesting at time 1319 as they were descending the pilots heard a light popping sound followed by a smell in the cockpit of oone and something burning this was then almost immediately followed by an ecam warning saying engine number one control system fault and engine two stall this was not good news the captain started actioning the ecam actions associated with the engine stalled which included reducing the trust back to idle on engine number two this effectively meant that they now only had engine number one available to them which was now starting to show the exact same ecam warnings that engine number two had previously shown this was including engine number one slow response and avoid rapid trust changes the sap spheres had now also reached the inner part of that engine the captain moved the number one trust level forward into the max continuous trust detent in accordance with the single engine procedures but the engine responded only by increasing the trust up to about 57% and one before dropping back again to 37% which was close to idle the pilots now knew that they were dealing with something far more serious than they had previously thought the captain pushed a transmit button on his radio and called Hong Kong K 780 pan pan pan pan pan pan we're operating ating Engine 2 on idle trust but otherwise normal procedures we would like to request an elevated response level a pan call is an urgency call which means that an aircraft is dealing with something unusual and might require priority but that there is no immediate risk to the lives of the people on board or the safety of the aircraft the air traffic controller acknowledged the pan call and decided to notify the airport's Fire and Rescue Services to make them ready in a state known as local standby this would have them deployed and ready if something would happen after the landing since the pilots realized that they were now going to effectively have to fly the approach on only one engine the procedure stipulated that the captain should fly the approach so the captain rebrief the approach according to the single engine profile meaning flaps three instead of flaps full and made sure that everything else was correctly programmed into the flight management computer he then asked their traffic control if they could get priority which was immediately approved and then they were cleared towards a waypoint called lmus which forms part of the transition into the last Runway 07 left they started turning towards that Waypoint but before he took over controls the captain also contacted the inflight service manager and explained the situation to her he asked her to please start preparing the cabin for landing and to have a look out on the right hand side engine to see if she could see something unusual and report back if she did the service manager read this back and then hung up the handset and as she was started to walk down back through the aircraft the captain made a PA to the cabin crew to start preparing for landing so far this was handled in an excellent manner by the whole crew with all parties involved informed and participating it was really really nice to see the aircraft was now given continuous descent clearances and with the captain now in control things were about to take a further turn for the worse at time 13:30 when they were about 45 miles away from the runway the aircraft needed to momentarily level off at 8,000 ft this meant that the captain had to add thrust on engine number one but when he did so the e message engine one stall appeared and that meant that their only remaining engine was now starting to have some real problems the pilots completed the ecam actions which included reducing the trust to idle on that engine as well meaning that now both engines were in idle and when the captain tried the engines by disconnecting the outer throttle and moving one of the trust levers forward slowly one at a time there was no response from either of them instead the E message andan one St just came back again this was really bad the aircraft was at 8,000 ft with a speed of around 295 knots at this point with 45 nautical miles to go a general rule is that an aircraft will Glide about three times its height in nautical miles plus maybe 1 mile per 10 knots above its stall speed so that would mean 8 * 3 24 plus maybe another 12 if they were lucky that's around 36 Mi which was clearly not enough with that in mind the crew now elected to make a Mayday call notifying a traffic control that they were experiencing a double engine stall situation they were immediately cleared to descend to 3,000 ft but could not yet start to turn visually for the airport as they were still inside clouds at this point knowing that the flight directors were giving him instructions based on the assumption that both Indians were still working the captain now asked for the flight directors to be turned off and he also disconnected the outop pilot and started flying the aircraft completely manually now the reasoning behind taking away the automatics at this point would be left up to the captain to explain but sometimes when you're dealing with an aircraft that is not behaving as it should flying it manually might give a better overall technical situation awareness and a better feel for the aircraft in any case the first thing he did after disconnecting was to pitch up slightly and start climbing which had the double effect of gaining him some altitude which is Glide distance and reducing the speed back towards the Green Dot speed which is the best speed for single engine operation in this case around 202 knots both of these factors would help the aircraft reach as far as possible if they couldn't get at least one of the engines back working for them once the captain was doing this the first officer started the auxiliary power unit the Apu and he switched both engine start selectors to ignite this would provide continuous start or ignition inside the engines to counteract any potential flameout the aircraft now finally broke through the clouds meaning that the pilots could actually see the airport the captain tried to slowly move the trust levels up from the idle position one at a time again but initially there was still no response from any of them but after a few tries andan number one finally responded and started increasing to an n one around 74% with the trust levels in the clim detent this was of course a little bit less than it should be giving with the trust lever in that position but it was more than enough to keep the aircraft flying and even accelerating a bit engine number two never responded and remained at an N1 of 177% Which is less than idle meaning that it had essentially failed at time 1336 the first officer gave the cabin crew seats for landing over the PA and a few seconds later he also added cabin crew to stations which meant that the cabin crew should now start getting ready for a possible evacuation off the landing the cabin crew immediately reacted and called up the cockpit and advised them that they were now fully ready for landing the captain was now visually maneuvering towards the runway and the tower advised him that he was cleared for a visual approach and that he could choose choose between Runway 07 left or right whichever he preferred as this was going on there were several more ecam messages displayed which kept displaying over the next few minutes none of the relevance to the engine problems that they were facing so they were quickly disregarded instead the first officer asked the captain if he should try to action the QR action items for an all engine flameout fuel remaining on engine number two to see if that could maybe get it back up running the captain agreed to try so the first officer deployed the ram turbine rat he selected the Apu bleeder switch to on and cycled the number two master switch to off and then on again but to no avail the engine remained below idle Now using that checklist did not form part of any stipulated procedure for this particular situation that they found themselves in but it certainly made sense and could have if the fault was of a different nature solved the problem this type of thinking outside of the box actions are all Hallmarks of great technical knowledge and airmanship under a very stressful condition after that the captain now wanted to start preparing the aircraft for landing so at time 1342 he asked for flaps config one to be selected the aircraft was at this point at 5,600 ft with a speed of 219 knots about 9 mies away from the airport that's pretty high but very understandable given that the captain knew that he could lose the remaining engine at any point and he wanted to have the option to continue to Glide in but he now wanted to start decelerating so he moved move the number one thrust lever back to idle detent but here came the next problem the engine did not respond instead it continued to deliver around 74% of trust meaning that from the altitude that the aircraft now was and with that kind of trust they were way too high and had way too much energy to complete the stabilized approach but the captain knew that he had no choice there was no telling how long he would have that remaining engine working so he just had to get this aircraft down he decided Ed to continue flying through the extended sent line to give himself some more track miles and then reestablish on the final from the north Instead at the same time the captain also took up the PA mic and made a short PA to the passengers telling them that they were experiencing some problems with their engines which was causing the vibrations that they could all feel and he also told them to remain seated and listen carefully to the commands of the cabin crew now he could have let the first officer make this PA but the truth is that during actual emergencies it's important for both the passengers and the crew to hear the captain's voice and for him to reaffirm the authority of the cabin crew again a really Stellar performance as the aircraft reestablished itself on the center line it was still at 5,200 ft 8 nautical miles away from touchdown and now with a speed of 234 knots which was just way too high the captain extended the speed brakes and the landing gear to try and increase the drag as it pitched the nose down towards the runway and this helped a little bit but not enough to keep the speed below the maximum speed for flaps one which was 240 knots this caused an over speed warning to start sounding in the cockpit and this happened at the same time as the pilots were going through the landing checklist Hong Kong tower now cleared the aircraft to land Runway 07 left and gave them the surface wind of 1 15° at 13 knots meaning a moderate crosswind from the right and number one was still producing around 70% of trust making the deceleration impossible for the crew as they continue to blast down towards the runway with a speed around 100 knots faster than they should normally have the captain stole the speed Brak and armed it for landing instead so that they would get the help of the automatic ground spoilers off the touchdown as the aircraft bought 732 ft the speed was still 227 knots which flaps one selected and this high speed caused a much higher than normal vertical speed which in turn now trigger the ground proximity warning system too low terrain pull up now be heard together with a second overs speed warning the cockpit environment was now super stressful but it didn't seem to affect the two pilots too much they were still calmly discussing different options they had like if they should try to extend flaps two or not the captain said that the flaps would likely not come out due to the high speed but the first offic suggested that they should at least try it anyway flaps 2 was selected and almost immediately they received a flashing F relief warning indicating that the flaps was was not extending to the full flaps 2 position but instead to an intermediate position to protect the flap mechanism from the high aerodynamic loads at that speed anyway there was not much more that the pilots could do at this point they just had to get this aircraft down so the captain just continued pressing on the gpws kept blaring too low to rain and pull up as the runway kept getting closer and closer at an alarming speed at time 1343 the Airbus A330 touched down on Runway c 7 left about about 680 m in on the runway with a speed of 231 knots almost double the normal touchdown speed the right main wheel touched down first but because of the speed it had in the right crosswind it immediately bounced up again causing a slight Bank to the left now the captain knew that there was no room for any bouncing at this speed so he pushed the nose forward and the aircraft touched down the second time but due to the high bank and now downward momentum the left engine cowling now slammed into the runway causing Sparks to fly behind them at this point the ground spoilers finally extended killing all of the lift from the wings and bringing the full weight of the aircraft down onto the wheels and onto the brakes the first officer initially called no spoilers no revers of green light no Diesel and that caused the captain to disconnect the alter brake which was set a low by the way and apply Max manual braking the reverses were also selected but only the now damaged engine number one reverser actually deployed the aircraft kept barreling down the runway transferring an enormous amount of kinetic energy onto its brakes but eventually it started to slow down and it finally came to a Full Stop about 300 M before the runway end immediately after the aircraft had touched down the fire trucks had entered the runway behind them and started chasing the aircraft down the runway now as the aircraft had come to a complete stop they approached carefully from each side to try and assess the status of the aircraft and its brakes inside of the cockpit the pilots gave out a short sigh of relief but they knew that this wasn't over yet maybe there was a fire outside on the brakes and the wheels and there would be a need of an evacuation the captain made an immediate PA to the passengers saying that they were evaluating the situation and asking them to please remain seated the fly crew then proceeded with shutting down the engines and running through the remaining ecam checklist which they still had on their screens the captain now mentioned to the first officer that he was initially Keen to go with a safe option of keeping the passengers on board and then disembark them normally now that might come as a surprise to you but it's actually true and evacuation is a maneuver which is almost always going to cause passenger injuries and it's supposed to only be used in case of a directly lifethreatening situation the tower directed the captain to get into contact with the fire leader on frequency one to1 decimal line and whilst he did so both Pilots watch how the breake temperature indicator kept Rising towards 1,000° C C grade as a precaution when they saw this they now started doing the evacuation checklist down to the actual evacuation command just to have everything prepared in case it would be needed and it soon would be the fire leader informed the pilots that he could see smoke and Fire coming off the brakes and that they were now spraying water on them to try to cool them down the captain asked him to confirm that he could actually see fire and when the fire chief did so the captain elected to initiate the evacuation which I completely understand because it's really really hard to foresee how any type of fire might develop so without any more precise information than that if you hear fire and smoke you evacuate when the captain called the evacuate evacuate command the cabin crew were all prepared and reacted immediately by opening all eight emergency exits all slides were deployed except for one in one of the after doors where the slide had been disarmed off the landing by mistake that door was then closed rearmed and opened again which solved the issue the whole evacuation took 2 minutes and 15 seconds to complete which is a bit longer than the calculated 90 seconds it should take and that was most likely due to the fact that several passengers against the direct instruction of the crew elected to take their hand luggage with them the two pilots and the inflight service manager evacuated the aircraft last after first having walked through the entire aircraft and verified that everyone had exited safely out of the 322 passengers and crew on board 259 evacuated without any issues two received minor injuries like scrapes and bruises and one passenger damaged her ankle so bad that she later had to have surgery but all in all this was a fantastic outcome given what had actually happened after the engines were then examined by the investigators the sap particles were quickly found and the whole fuel system on the associated stands at Janda airport were shut down cleaned and then rechecked before they could be used again EA was asked to create better guidance Ence for the testing of these systems and the Indonesian authorities were also criticized for their lack in oversight new fuel filters for the pump trucks were designed to make sure that this type of contamination could never happen again and Airbus updated their Warning Systems to associate these type of warnings with possible fuel contamination and then give Pilots the suitable guidance they would need finally both Pilots were given the Polaris award for airmanship in 2014 for their outstanding handling of of this emergency now if you found this interesting then you will love these videos as well consider supporting the job that I'm doing by joining my Patron crew buying some merch or even send a super thanks it's all hugely appreciated have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 1,408,539

Keywords: mentour pilot, airbus, boeing, aviation, viral video, plane, aeroplane, pilot, full episode, cathay pacific, indonesia, Hong Kong, thrust, danger, fuel, contaminants, pump truck, dr reason, swiss cheese, Juanda Surabaya Airport, fuel-hydrants, Super Absorbent Polymers SAP, A330, Cathay flight 780, No Engine control, Seconds from disaster, Hero pilot, Fuel contamination, Aviation explained, Fear of flying, Nervous flyer, Nervous flyer help

Id: x7x0QcPZfl8

Length: 41min 45sec (2505 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023