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Message started by JayG on Feb 21st, 2011 at 5:11pm

Title: Re: Lou - STORIES
Post by LOU on Feb 20th, 2022 at 8:58pm
Hello all you simmers,

Hope you are all well and safe.

I was chatting with an old pilot friend and we were talking about minimum equipment for dispatch.  In the flight handbook there was a section called MEL or minimum equipment list.  Every once in a while we would have to consult the list to see if we were legal to fly if some item was not working. 

I remember a flight out of Dallas TX in a 757 one evening....

We arrived at the gate for the last flight from Dallas to New York.  The flight had a full passenger load and the weather was good.  When I arrived in the cockpit the first thing I would look for was the logbook.  In the logbook there was an item that would require looking in the MEL.  The left engine generator was INOP. The 757 has a generator on each engine and the MEL says in order to dispatch you need two sources of electrical power.  Okay, so we will need to run the APU for the entire flight to provide a second power source for the flight.  If the APU were to quit, or the other engine driven generator stopped working then you would have to declare an emergency and land ASAP before the plane would run out of battery power (around 30 minutes at best.

Well, over my flying career I had a few of these situations occur. 

I will digress...  I was flying out of Paris CDG one fine day in a Boeing 767-200.  We had just taken off and were in a turn to join the departure when one of the engine driven generators quit.  :o  We were fully loaded with passengers and fuel just to make it even more interesting.  I reached up and started the APU.  If it would not start we would be forced to return to CDG and make an overweight landing.  It started so we would continue with our flight to New York running the APU for the entire trip.

So I return to the Dallas story and our situation with the left generator inop.

Departure time is here so the front door is closed and we prepare to push back from the gate.  I called the fellow driving the push tractor and we release the parking brake.  As we started the push the APU quit and all went dark since we had not yet started the engines. I called the tug driver and told him to stop the push and bring us back to the gate and plug in ground power.  Maintenance was called and the jet-way was put back on the plane. I made a PA announcement to the passengers explaining the situation and that we would be delayed until we could resolve the problem.  A mechanic showed up in the cockpit and we discussed the situation.  He said he thought if he replaced the left generator switch on the overhead panel maybe that could fix the problem with the engine driven generator.  He worked fast and hard to install a new generator control switch.  Now we had to run the engine to see if the fix would work.  Ground air was installed so we could start the engine since the APU was dead.  Well, you guessed it, the switch replacement did not fix the problem so now what do we do?. While the mechanic was working on fixing the switch a mechanic supervisor came to the cockpit and announced he was having the APU temp probes cleaned and was going to sign off the problem with the APU quitting. 

Now by this time in my career, approaching 37 years in the cockpit, I was not happy with this solution to fix the APU.  :(  I told the supervisor I was born at night, but not last night and argued that the APU needed something more than a cleaning of the temp probes.  He would not listen to me and continued to fill out the log book for dispatch.  Just as he handed me the log book telling me all was fine - wait for it - yes you guessed it... the APU quit again. 

So the epilogue is we ALL left the plane - passengers and crew - and went to the hotel and the next morning with a different plane we completed the trip.

Flying is fun! ;D 

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