United Grounds 777 Fleet.

Steyr

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7327561.stm

United grounds Boeing 777 fleet

United has transferred other aircraft onto the 777 routes.

United Airlines has been forced to cancel flights after grounding its entire fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft.

United said that during a regular review of maintenance records it had discovered tests on a fire suppression system had not been thorough enough.

The airline cancelled 31 of its 84 daily 777 flights on Wednesday and expects more cancellations on Thursday.

United has been using other aircraft on the mainly long-haul routes as well as booking passengers onto other airlines.

Coincidentally, the US House of Representatives will be holding a hearing about airline maintenance on Thursday.

In recent weeks, American Airlines, Delta, Southwest and US Airways have all been forced to take aircraft out of service because of lapsed maintenance inspections.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that United's grounded planes were not linked to a clampdown it is currently having on safety inspections, which led to some of the other recent groundings.

Our man in Havana

I have always been nervous of the 777. I was on one back in 1999 flying LHR-EWR also United, brand new aircraft. Half way across the ocean, the left engine shutdown and we ended up in the arsehole of Canada after an emergency landing. Ever since I have been afraid of the 777, so this comes as no surprise to me.

Run_to_da_hills

Bond-007 wrote: »

I have always been nervous of the 777. I was on one back in 1999 flying LHR-EWR also United, brand new aircraft. Half way across the ocean, the left engine shutdown and we ended up in the arsehole of Canada after an emergency landing. Ever since I have been afraid of the 777, so this comes as no surprise to me.

I flew back from Cairo on a BA 777 in 2001, I agree they are far too big of an aircraft to have just two engines.

peter1892

There's a thread on pprune:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=320833

When I saw the title of the thread I thought it might be a result of some initial findings from the LHR BA777 incident, obviously that's not the case.

I agree they are far too big of an aircraft to have just two engines.

They're not that much bigger than an Airbus A330 or a 767. What constitutes 'too big to only have 2 engines' anyway?

Our man in Havana

Are they rated to fly on one engine only?

The reason I ask is that during the incident I was involved in the captain said that he needed to land ASAP. The nearest available airfield being Gander.

peter1892

Bond-007 wrote: »

Are they rated to fly on one engine only?

The reason I ask is that during the incident I was involved in the captain said that he needed to land ASAP. The nearest available airfield being Gander.

For a trans-atlantic (or any other) ETOPS flight it was probably prudent to land ASAP. They would be rated to fly for a certain length of time on one engine only (I believe this varies between airlines).

Darwin

Not all 777's are configured with the same engine - the engine choice is typically configured by the customer buying the aircraft (e.g. Rolls Royce or Pratt and Whitney), so there's really no need to be nervous of the 777 on that account alone. I would start getting worried if bits started falling off the aircraft though

Run_to_da_hills

peter1892 wrote: »

They're not that much bigger than an Airbus A330 or a 767. What constitutes 'too big to only have 2 engines' anyway?

368 people

peter1892

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

368 people

I'm sure they could squeeze a few more seats in if they went all-economy...

Anyway, the issue with UAL seems more to do with inspection & maintenance schedules than any problem with the 777 itself.

There were a number of engine shutdowns in the early days of operation (IIRC BA experienced a few) but as already pointed out, different airlines operate the 777 with different engine types. And the type has an excellent safety record (touch wood).

Editing to add: If there were a large number of twin-engine jets falling out of the sky with engine malfunctions I'd agree that operating such a/c on routes like the North Atlantic was a bad idea. Thankfully that's not been the case.

*Kol*

peter1892 wrote: »

For a trans-atlantic (or any other) ETOPS flight it was probably prudent to land ASAP. They would be rated to fly for a certain length of time on one engine only (I believe this varies between airlines).

ASAP could be anywhere up to 120 minutes away on a transatlantic flight as they would be certified ETOPS 120. Depending on where you are on the route that could be Iceland (Keflavik) or Canada (Goose bay or Gander). If they fly non etops across the pond then they would alter the route to be nearer any available airport in the case of an engine failure so there is nothing to worry about. There are many operators using twin engine aircraft on transatlantic routes (B757,B767, A330).