Lucky UA-881 from Chicago to Tokyo

[whatsthequestionnow]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/...014090,00.html

By Kate Schneider

NEWS.com.au

May 22, 2009 01:25pm

Fuel leak
Safe ... sergeant spots fuel leak on passenger plane mid-flight, saving over 300 people / US Air Force
A SERGEANT who spotted a fuel leak mid-flight saved the lives of more than 300 passengers, the US Air Force says.

“An Airman who saves the lives of more than 300 passengers is definitely a story worth hearing,” the US Air force said in a press release.

The plane was flying from Chicago to Narita airport, Japan when the US Air Force's Staff Sgt Bartek Bachleda noticed fuel leaking from the plane.

"I noticed the leak on the left side of the aircraft right behind the wing earlier during take-off," Mr Bachleda said.

Mr Bachleda alerted a stewardess who was initially unconcerned, however he continued analysing the outflow of fuel and then told her that it was an emergency.

"She (the stewardess) was completely serious and was no longer handing out drinks," he said.

"I told her you need to inform your captain before we go oceanic."

The captain watched the video footage Mr Bachleda had recorded, showing the plane losing around 6000 pounds (2727 kilograms) of fuel an hour, and observed the leak, deciding to divert the plane to SanFrancisco.

The captain told Mr Bachleda that they would have never made it to Japan if it wasn't for his actions.

The Aviation Herald, a website that monitors aviation incidents, has identified the flight at United Airlines Boeing 747-400 on flight UA-881 from Chicago to Tokyo

[demue]

Good call by the Air Force guy and smart to record it to show to the captain. I mean according to the report the copickt crew had already been monitoring fuel levels and tried to figure out where the fuel loss came from but it could have been too late as even a 6000pounds per hour drain on fuel is critical on this long flight.

You don't want to end up like that Canadian A330 (charter company) that run out of fuel over the Atlantic and had to glide to an airport in the Azores. Amazingly the flight crew managed to make it and land the bird in one piece (a bit roughed up). back then the problem resulted in wrong fuel load calculations by the ground crew after Canada switched to metric system for fuel load calculation.

Anyway, glad it went well.

[milehighj]

You don't want to end up like that Canadian A330 (charter company) that run out of fuel over the Atlantic and had to glide to an airport in the Azores. Amazingly the flight crew managed to make it and land the bird in one piece (a bit roughed up). back then the problem resulted in wrong fuel load calculations by the ground crew after Canada switched to metric system for fuel load calculation.

You're getting your Canadian gliding airliner stories crossed.

The AirTransat A330 incident (earlier this decade) was due to a fuel leak (like this UA incident), exacerbated by pilot error which saw even more more fuel being dumped from the non-leaky tank...

The insufficient fuel load due to imperial -> metric calculation error was in fact the Air Canada 767 incident which took place in the 1980s...

[B727]

Speaking of lucky, aren't they glad they numbered that flight 881

[vincent0720]

a friend of mine is on that plan.
was complaining about the delay and delay and delay.
I did not know that it actually saves her life.

[cscs1956]

To my suprise that why did the captain did not notice it from all the equipments he has !