That was a triple seven.

 

I was referring to the telematics, irrespective of the aircraft type.

 

telematics are probably at least somewhat respective of aircraft type (and being within 1000nm of land)

 

They have Iridium satellite pings from the engines, going out to sea. That thing is in the deep South Indian Ocean. Confirmed parts have washed ashore around the Indian Ocean basin consistent with that.

But that's the point, there are systems that off board data, even when 1000's of miles away from any receiver.

 

Are you sure it sends real time. Most systems send burst transmissions at predetermined intervals. Real time transmission would get expensive.

 

Yes I wouldn't hold high hopes for live tech data from engines or other systems, aside from what's on the FDR or maybe what can be downloaded from any other surviving hardware.

That kind of data generally goes by SATCOM, and the onboard Sat antennas probably aren't tracking so great on the takeoff roll and climb out, they tend to work better straight and level.

 

I was thinking about this today. If you go into the mx pages on the FMC there's a LOT of data that's tracked. How much is down-loaded/transmitted IDK. Touch the yoke and the flight control inputs change. I do know that they get alerts of divergent performance before the pilots know anything.

If an obvious safety risk was transmitted you'd think the operators would have been notified ASAP. It doesn't seem like that has happened? So either no data was sent OR the data was normal.

So if there's been no Emergency AD, or similar requirement made, is the transmitted data/FDR not showing an unknown/unexpected event/risk? Are we back to Ockham's Razor - what's the easiest way to lose thrust? Was that accidental or deliberate?

 

Assuming...

1.No data transmitted. Good working assumption for technical reasons (worth noting that Boeing or another MRO contractor might also be in direct receipt of such data).

And

2.That the FDR functioned correctly and the data is readily retrieved.

Given that, the longer the delay for the prelim info to hit the street, the more one tends to suspect that the folks in control (AAIB in this case) may be concerned about optics which reflect poorly on their equities. Not suggesting they're fabricating info or planning a coverup, just that they need to tread lightly for local political sensitivities and perhaps so some folks can get their ducks lined up before it hits the fan.

I would think the FDR data could be downloaded by now barring any tech issues. I'll give them a couple more days before I start to wonder if they're slow-rolling due for politics.

I don't think they would slow roll to protect the equities of boeing, US NTSB, etc. In fact if it was an apparent boeing issue, I'd expect technical directives to start flying and maybe even groundings... too much liability to sit on that sort of info.

 

Now there are rumblings in the interwebs about fuel vapor lock.

Seems unlikely with kerosene, and given our pumps all have a pretty good pressure head to begin with, but it was a very hot day. So maybe a load of hot fuel from the supply tank combined a hot airplane, and hot engines if the plane had just turned (it did IIRC) could get you closer to those margins.

Also possible that local fuel quality was problematic, for example if it got mixed with other fuel. Gasoline boiling point would be way lower, and even road diesel can vary widely and worst case could be similar to gasoline.

Fuel would not have to actually reach sea level boiling point, but a lower boiling point would make it more susceptible to boiling in the pump due to low pressure. Probably more likely on the engine pump as opposed to tank pumps.

Airport fuel systems *typically* should have filters and even detectors for particles and water. But not sure if they would detect wrong fuel or mixed fuel.

But I'm not sure how you get enough thrust to get to V1, and then have vapor lock manifest after. Seems like it would happen when they set TO thrust, due to high fuel flow.

 

Vapor lock happening at the exact same time on separate fuel pumps on each side of the aircraft?

I hate the contaminated fuel theory because no other aircraft had issues that day. You figured if there was contaminated fuel it would have been in other aircraft's wings too. The other thing that discounts that theory is the 787 didn't have any issues starting the engines, taxiing around, and getting take off thrust. You figured you would have signs of bad fuel before that point.