I posted this in a couple different places but thought I would report in this thread.
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I think if it were a fuel contamination problem there would have been other instances of this occurring out of PEK that day. On the 744 if we get low fuel temps we have to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We can usually accomplish this by speeding up and/or descending.
I encountered outside temps of -75C a few weeks ago over northern Canada. We sped up and descended. This kept the fuel temp at roughly -36C until we came out of that cold air. Initially we sped up from .83 to .87 and that started to do the trick. Keep in mind, we were fueled in DFW with Jet A not A1. Our procedure is that we must have been fueled three sectors with A1 before we can use that -47C as a freeze point.
Could be that the aircraft had been fueled with Jet A at some point in the past couple days and a bit of it was still in the tanks? Not sure what MMO is on the 777 but they may not have been able to speed up enough to get above -40C. Having been fueled with Jet A1 out of Beijing, they may not have been concerned with it. It would be interesting to see where that aircraft had been over the previous few days.