Dave Fitzgerald

Massive thread drift ahead. In 1988, UAL was severely short on lift. There were no planes to be had on the market. New planes were years away, and not much available on the used market....until....

CargoLux sold to UAL 5 worn out 747-100's. No, these were not the 747-200's used JFK-NRT. Different planes all together--these 200's were brand new and spent their entire lives flying this one route. These 5 100's were originally American planes, the original batch of 747's. You could tell these planes because they still had only 3 windows on the upper deck. United had to basically rebuild these planes, and the corrosion was so bad, had to pretty much reskin a large part of the fuselage. When they were done, they were pretty nice, but never quite got over the years of abuse from their previous lives. They still had a lot of bugs in them.

So, UAL flew each of them domestically for a couple of weeks to wring them out. This wasn't all that long after PAC day when UAL bought the Pan Am Pacific division. The very first flight across the Pacific on this one sister, had a NH flight engineer, and a new UAL 747 captain, no Pan Am experience. (It turns out there was a full DH crew downstairs, all ex Pan AM that could have helped. This incident is why, when you DH, you are strongly encouraged to introduce yourself to the working crew to let then know you are there in back.)

I never plumbed the rope start so a lot of this is from the incident. The Pan Am guys were not used to the planes being fixed when a writeup was made. They just made things work. For years, an unofficial work around to fuel distribution and balancing fuel in the 747 was to use the fuel dump system and manifold to crossfeed or transfer fuel around in the 747 fuel tanks. Only weeks prior, TK had prohibited this work around. Remember NH FE?? They had just past Shemya, on the chain, when the first engine flamed out.

This was the first flight since rebuild that there had been fuel in the aux tanks. SFO-NRT. It turns out that the FE was having trouble with the fuel burning properly from the aux tanks, and it was burning out of the mains. He couldn't figure it out, and didn't say anything till the first engine flamed out. 747, 3 engines? No problem. They did get it relit, for a while.

The fuel panel on all Boeings is not a simple thing. The crossfeed valves in particular. When you move a crossfeed switch, the light comes on, then goes off. You think that the valve has moved into the commanded position when the light goes out. Not true. What happens is that power has been applied to the valve to move. It doesn't actually mean that the valve did anything. Right at the top of decent, 3 of 4 engines flame out due to fuel starvation. They ended up landing and having exactly the predicted landing fuel, but all in #2 main. They landed with only #2 running, with 22,000 lbs of fuel all behind #2. The NH FE did not know about moving fuel through the dump system. If they had known the Pan Am crew was on board, they might have been able to help and avoid the entire situation.

During the investigation, no one could figure out what had happened, until a flight test crew flew the plane back from NRT to SFO. The same thing happened. Screwy fuel burn problems. This time, the flight test crew moved the fuel and had little trouble dealing with the problem. Still, it took a while to figure out the problem. It turns out, two of the cross feed valves failed when cold soaked. They worked fine when on the ground, but failed in flight. The problem was verified when they packed the 2 valves in dry ice to cold soak them, and they failed to move when commanded. Remember the crossfeed light system? The light comes on when power is applied, and goes off when power is removed. It does not mean the valve has moved.

Thus the 747 single engine landing in NRT and why these 5 100's were called the lemon sisters, and why some planes earn their name. Needless to say, UAL tried pretty hard to keep this quiet, not many people outside of having been involved directly with the incident even know about it. Then....there is "Christine." A UAL 767-300. No kidding the nose number is 6666, but that is another tale.....

robthree

Coincidentally, I heard that nose number on the EWR MX freq this morning (or last night, depending on your point of view). I don't think the pax on that one had a good night.

rnav2dlrey

sincerely appreciated the drifting! great story.

UAL T38 Phlyer

I was an FO on ROPES as well as the -400. As I recall (been a long time), the "dump manifold" was also the official primary (or secondary?) transfer manifold. You just had to make sure the dumps were closed.

Heard a similar story, circa 2001. New Capt; engineer is a ROPE (Retired Old Pilot Engineer) who had been a Capt a few weeks before. Asia to LAX, they lose some pumps....trapped fuel. New Capt wants to ditch. FO and FE are threatening to tie him up unless he transfers through the jettison manifold. He thinks they'll lose gas. Finally convince him to do it, divert to SFO. Allegedly went back to being an FO for a while....

666: flew her last week...no surprises; pretty good jet. I call her "Lucifer's Chariot;" an homage to an OV-10 I used to fly with the same tail number (and nickname).

The N-number is (no kidding) N666UA.

ItnStln

I bet that's an interesting story!

ItnStln

Fitting name!

JoePatroni

Pretty sure in normal ops there was no ability to transfer fuel, only burn it down- just like the 757, 767, and 777. The dump manifold was a backdoor way to actually move fuel and it worked just fine.

Aviatorr

ROPES?? Can ya help out a Newhire with what that is please!!!!

JoePatroni

Refers to the 747-100, 747-200, and 747-300 that all had a flight engineer, commonly called "rope start" 747's.

F15andMD11

Maybe...I thought it was Retired Old Pilot Engineer.