Bad fuel would have caused an issue hours ago.

BA38 is possible, not sure what the temps aloft were. On a short flight like this it just sounds implausible.

The fire isn't that violent. there is tens of liters of unusable fuel that will burn even if engines have flamed out due to fuel starvation.

We will wait and see.

 

Bad fuel as in wrong formulation, wrong additives you'd think would manifest quickly.

If it was contaminated with particulates, that could take a while to clog the filters.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay_Pacific_Flight_780

took about 2:30 hours for it to significantly impact Cathay 780

 

Prelim out today.

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/a...ort/193769/pdf

EICAS warnings "L ENGINE OIL PRESSURE" and "R ENGINE OIL PRESSURE" occurred at the same time approx 70 seconds prior to impact.

Report suggests fuel filters were clear, and fuel was present throughout most of the fuel system.

This is a curious one.

Could the power levers have jumped the idle / shutoff gate? Or the tabs perhaps were inadvertently lifted by the pilot while reducing power to idle?

CVR will help. But "Sh1t!" could mean anything...

Thoughts?

 

The fuel controls showed mechanically in idle position so it's possible they brought the thrust levers back out of cutoff? The FDR will show if they went into cutoff or not.

 

Shutting down the engines accidentally would go real well in this Age 67 discussion.

 

Captain was 50. 2,800 hrs in type. FO was 65, 138 hrs in type.

 

Well thank God neither of them was 67. It could have really turned out badly.

 

A buddy told me that he thought the fuel shutoff gate on the levers could be triggered inadervently by the PIC reaching across for the flaps as the SIC idles the levers. Levers could push the PIC's foream down against the latches, latches somehow get activated, and the levers could then continue past idle to cutoff, assuming the SIC was somewhat aggressive with his power chop.

CRJ had a similar shutoff latch, but I don't recall anything like that ever happening. I think the CRJ latches had to be pulled up? Been a long time. Maybe a sleeve got caught?

I do remember that when I shut the engines down that I was meticulous about doing them deliberately and one at a time with a pause, to avoid developing any dangerous muscle memory that might bite me in the heat of the moment. After watching CA's grabbing both and shutting it all done in one smooth motion.

 

If I remember right, there was a 700 in China about 5 years back. CA was "guarding" the throttles, FO chopped them back with enough intent to cause the gates to go up against CA's hand and shut both down on short final.
That one still made the runway though