American Airlines 767 Emergency Landing - Manchester 23/2/08

[A330Crazy]

Hi All,

Yesterday Michael (T5) and myself took a trip up to Manchester. Left LHR on the 7.05 Bmi flight (G-RJXD) arriving in Manchester for around 8am. We bused it over to the AVP where we spent our day.

Sadly the weather was not on side, very overcast and the wind was too much!

Photos of the trip coming later. For now here's some shots of the AA 767 that ran into trouble yesterday.

N386AA originally headed out to the runway around 11am - and according to the locals that was about an hour behind in the first place. She didnt get very far as she returned to stand, where she stayed for a few hours.

At just after 1pm, she re-appeared and headed to the sky. An hour later the entire Manchester airport fire team were everywhere! Most of us in the AVP didn't know what was going on, until we saw AA return with an obvious problem.

Apparently she had lost use of Hydrollics, therefore (as you can see in the pics) No flaps etc. Upon landing you can clearly see the bay doors were hanging open and she suffered a rather hard landing... resulting in two blown tyre's. According to what we were hearing over the radio, she'd also had her brakes cease up due to the hard braking from the landing.

Anyhow enough jabber... here you go (sorry they aren't of the best quality - I know Michael has some too)

[Future Pilot]

Ouch that does look like a hard landing, I guess that incident made up for the bad weather .

[adamdowley]

Great photos, and I love the wingflex in #4!

I don't know the 767 too well, but an air intake by the tail is open - does that mean the APU was on?

From the photos reverse thrust was still available, as were the spoilers, so it wasnt anywhere near a complete hydraulics loss. These sort of incidents are not uncommon, and was only drawn out in the way that it was becuase the fire service sprayed media onto the undercarriage - I should think it would have been over sooner had the fire service not done that.

[T5]

The first shot is very nice! It's amazing just how much havoc was caused as a result of this incident.

[tomfellows]

Excellent sequence of shots. Glad to see everything turned out fine.

[T5]

Here's one more from me...

[A Spalding]

What a great moment to catch. Glad to hear everything ended well & safely.
Great pictures as always Andrew,
Adam

[widmeister]

A330, well done catching the whack-down in #3

[Happyonground]

Thanks for the great photos! I was on that flight, and was very happy when the plane stopped! Sorry if some of the photos are not too clear, they were through the window of the bus.

[Whiskey Delta]

Great pictures, glad everyone got out without a scratch. It looks from the pictures that they had flaps,slats and thrust reverses so approach speeds were probably normal but I'm sure they had degraded brakes. I don't know the systems on the 767 but they might have had to use the parking brake to stop the airplane at the end there which would have caused the tires to blow.

[Cking]

Hi all
I just want to clear up a few things about this incident.

1. The aircraft did return to stand earlier for a totally un related defect.
2. The aircraft did not crash.
3. The aircraft did not have a total hydraulic failure
It just lost all the fluid from the centre system. The centre system powers various systems most noticeably the u/c for retraction and the main gear doors for opening and closing. The gear would have been dropped by the alternate system. This is an electric motor that breaks the geometric up locks on the gear. Gravity then causes the gear to “Barge” the doors out of the way and locks it self down. The main gear doors would not retract.
4. The centre system also powers the flaps and slats. They would have been operated on alternate too. The alternate system is a lot slower in operation than the normal system. So the flaps would have not been lowered to the normal landing position because if they had to do a go around this would have created extra drag when you least wanted it! That is why the landing was faster than normal.
5. The centre system powers the steering. That is why the aircraft did not leave the runway under it’s own steam.
4. The aircraft could not have carried on to Chicago in this state
The centre system powers the hydraulic motor driven generator. This is essential for ETOPS operation.
6. The aircraft did not burst the wheels on landing. Two of the wheels deflated because the wheels and brakes were very hot because of the heavy and fast landing the aircraft did. The wheels are designed to do this to prevent a pressure release; this might hurt the ground crew outside the aircraft.
7. The fire service did not smother the brakes with foam or water or “Media” To do this would cause the hot bits to cool to fast and cause other problems. The standard procedure is just let the u/c cool naturally, if you do get a brake fire there are special extinguishers for that. It’s a dry powder that smothers the fire but does not cool it.
8. The Normal brakes on the 767 are powered by the right hydraulic system, so the brakes would have worked normally
9. The reversers are powered by the left and right systems
10. The APU would have been running to provide two sources of electrical power it they had lost an engine
11. Spoilers 3,4,5,8,9 &10 are powered by the centre system so they would not have operated.

All in this entire “incident” was a minor event although I don’t think the people on board woud say so! Perhaps it only made the news because it was a slow news day? The only thing of note for me is that in thirty years in the business I have never seen the fuse plugs go on an aircraft tyre!


Rgds Cking

P.S. Happyonground, You missed me!!!

[Happyonground]

CKing-

I have another 10 pictures so you might be in one of them!

Regards, Happyonground

[Cking]

Go on post em', You know you want to!!!!

Rgds Cking

[Cking]

Hears one of mine!



Rgds Cking

[Happyonground]

Did I get you yet Cking?

Regards, Happyonground

[Cking]

HA! you still missed me!

Rgds Cking

[adamdowley]

Cking, if you're one of the engineers that changed the wheels when it was sat on the runway, I've probably seen you in the MA Airfield Ops photos that were taken, hehe. Shame I can't put them on here though.

[Cking]

Cking, if you're one of the engineers that changed the wheels when it was sat on the runway, I've probably seen you in the MA Airfield Ops photos that were taken, hehe. Shame I can't put them on here though.

DO'H!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rgds Cking

[Happyonground]

How about now? The rest are tooo blurry to post.

Regards, Happyonground

[Stuart Allen]

Some great captures there A330. In the right place at the right time.
Cheers
Stu