Do the L UAL 767 300's have carbon or steel brakes?

They see to get warm to me with very little effort (ie not much braking)

 

It is my understanding that every plane in every fleet at United has switched to carbon brakes.

That being said, landing Flaps 25 vs 30 to "save gas" means I see the temps in the 4s, and once in a while, briefly in the 5s.

Had one wheel at 6 last week, and I thought I was not hogging the brakes.

 

There are still several older 757s with steel brakes.

 

767-300's have carbon brakes. They are very good brakes, but good for only 1 stop. Using auto brakes will actually elevate your brake temps over later manual braking, regardless of what TK says. Brake wear is different than brake temps.

If you want less brake wear, use auto brakes, but you will have higher temps, because it brakes earlier in the landing roll=more energy dissapated through braking.

If you want lower temps, don't use auto brakes, use more reverse, and longer roll with later light manual braking. Fewer number of applications and lighter manual braking will dramatically lower temps.

Hard to do both. If you do it the TK way and maximize the use of autobrakes, you will have higher temps.

 

The lower the brake temp, the more the wear. Carbon brakes are meant to be heated up... the kicker is the balance on the turn time.

 

You guys can actually see the brake temps... nice. None of AA's 763s have the brake temp display. Wonder how many times I had hot brakes!

 

I see.

That explains a few things. On the legacy CAL side, I flew the 76 400 allot. Never had a concern over brake temps. Heck, One time I even used max auto. No problem.

I do notice the 76 300 gets brakes temps up to 4 and 5 with just auto brakes 1. This may explain why I fly with allot of L UA guys that use brakes zero (off). The only thing I can rationalize is that the brakes are steel instead of carbon.

Whenever I land a 300 with brakes one I get elevated brake temps. When I land with brakes zero (off) I have no perceivable issue with brake temps.

When light, after burning off the fuel it likes to taxi fast so I do need to get on the brakes a bit as I go from the runway to the gate. So that doesn't help either.

I think I will land with brakes zero (off) for a while and try that if weather and runway conditions permit.

 

Most of the time, UAL is incapable of turning the plane in the time it would be required to wait for the brakes to cool, so it doesn't really matter. The only thing is, if the brake temp light is on, 5 or higher, now you need to make a write up and MX gets involved to make sure you don't blow a fuse plug.

Like I said, most of the time, not an issue, except on short runways, OGG, LIH.

It's a balancing act, higher temps and less wear vs. running off the end of the runway, more wear with cool brakes... carbon brakes are counter intuitive.

 

I flew and LCA'd on the UAL 767 for a long time.

Here's my advice:

If you want to use the brakes do so and don't worry one bit about the temps. Normally the turns are long enough for the cooling and it's a pretty simple thing (unlike the old steel brakes on guppies and three holers which would overheat the tires and blow the fuse plugs).

The whole idea of carbon "hot" = good or better is a "who cares" item. Use em if you need em because that is why they are there.

If you get worried about brake temps then the hesitation when they are needed may be a fatal one.

 

We are already there with respect to use of thrust reversers. Until the bean counters took over the world reverse was used on every landing, now we have a whole generation of pilots who are skittish about using it even with snow covered runways.