Subject: A320-231 hydraulic failure |
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Subject: A320-231 hydraulic failure |
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Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 15:41:22 GMT
From: dpw@dircon.co.uk (Daniel Wilder)
Reply-To: ata-watchers@csl.sri.com
To: ata-watchers@csl.sri.com
| An Airbus A320-231 operated by a UK
IT operator suffered the loss of the blue and green hydraulic systems Monday two weeks
ago. The plane landed in direct law at Brest after having declared a mayday. Background: The aircraft was doing a LGW-AGP-LGW rotation when it was over France and suffered a blue system failure. The crew carried out *ECAM actions and elected to divert to Stansted where full engineering support was available. Four minutes later it lost the green system. The pressure of the only remaining system, the yellow, started to fluctuate at a fairly alarming rate. The crew, realising that their time could well be up, decided to land at the nearest suitable airport. *ECAM: Emerg Checklist according to the Manual Preliminary investigation has suggested that there could have been air in the blue system that caused a banging effect (like air in a radiator) that ruptured its hydraulic line. The only connection between the blue and green system (apart from being on the same aircraft) is that they share the same mounting bracket in the left hand wheel bay. It is thought that vibrations from the blue system *"banging" could have been transmitted to the green system via this bracket which could have caused the green system line to fracture. However, both the CAA and DGAC(?) are still looking into this. * aka hydraulic hammering The captain who carried out the landing stated that direct law was far more stable than in the simulator and that the only way he knew he wasn't in normal law was because he had to manually trim the aircraft. I flew with this captain in the simulator last weekend and for an "out of interest" experiment, we shut down all hydraulic systems. The aircraft was fairly stable in roll but the pitch was all over the place. Speed control was also impossible, with it fluctuating between Vls and Vmo. It was felt that if this happened in real life, the only solution available would be to try and reduce vertical speed with engine power and ditch the aircraft in the sea. Regards, Daniel. --- Daniel Wilder www.dpw.dircon.co.uk |
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