Simviation Forums

Whose Maintenance is bad?!?

For anybody who is not familiar with a jet engine, a jet fan blade should be perfectly smooth. You might want to think twice the next time you fly on a Chinese Airline.

A pilot for a Chinese carrier requested permission and landed at FRA (Frankfurt, Germany) for an unscheduled refueling stop. The reason became soon apparent to the ground crew: The Number 3 engine had been shutdown previously because of excessive vibration, and because it didn't look too good. It had apparently been no problem for the tough guys back in China:as they took some sturdy straps and wrapped them around two of the fan blades and the structures behind, thus stopping any unwanted windmilling (engine spinning by itself due to airflow passing thru the blades duringflight) and associated uncomfortable vibration caused by the suboptimal fan.

Note that the straps are seatbelts....how resourceful! After making the "repairs", off they went into the wild blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only three engines! With the increased fuel consumption, they got a bit low on fuel, and just set it down at the closest airport (FRA) for a quick refill.

That's when the problems started:

The Germans, who are kind of picky about this stuff, inspected the malfunctioning engine and immediately grounded the aircraft. (Besides the seatbelts, notice the appalling condition of the fan blades.) The airline operator had to send a chunk of money to get the first engine replaced (took about 10 days).

The repair contractor decided to do some impromptu inspection work on the other engines, none of which looked all that great either. The result: a total of 3 engines were eventually changed on this plane before it was permitted to fly again.

And soon they will export their cars to America, be sure to buy one of those quality machines so you can increase the trade deficit.

YUGO anyone???

Wow.  That looks like its just BEGGING for a compressor stall

Glad the germans fixed it, it would have been terrible for there to be a fatality because of irresponsible behavior on the part of the airline.

A bit on the harsh side - that's really only an example of (one company's) maintenence, not manufacturing (cos I suppose the engines are either US or British on a 747).

The Chinese manufacturing industry make some very high quality products - how are they so good. They copy western techniques and methods. Cars have been coming out of Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia for quite some time, and are now almost as popular in Europe as Japanese models, and now a Chinese company has bought what was MG Rover in the UK, MG sports cars may well be manufactured there, using exactly the same tooling that came out of the plant in Birmingham, UK. It would be very unfair to tarnish a whole nation on one incident...

HOLY CRAP, that was a functioning engine?!?  :o Very scary....

Where the hell is QA on that one???  ;D

Glad they fixed it in time, something was bound to happen.

But it does look abstract in an artistic way 8-)

And soon they will export their cars to America, be sure to buy one of those quality machines so you can increase the trade deficit.

The last line says it all. This is an old chestnut which appears to have been revived for use as anti-Chinese propaganda. The accompanying text contains several inaccuracies or omissions which are possibly deliberately misleading. I can't find out when those photos were taken but they were discussed online in 2001 & the story was published in a Scottish newspaper in 2003 - without the above quote which seems to have been added recently. They're probably much older than that.

First of all, the airline is not identified. It was an Asian airline in the original story. It's quite likely the aircraft belonged to China Airlines which is the national airline of the Republic of China (otherwise known as Taiwan) & NOT the People's Republic aka Communist China. Note the subtle difference. Nowhere does it say that it was carrying passengers & it was most likely a freighter. It's also quite possible that it was a severely damaged engine being ferried back to base for repair. This is a common enough method for transporting engines on four-engined aircraft like the 747. Those don't look like seatbelts but more like the banding straps used for securing heavy loads on pallets & trucks. Seems a sensible enough precaution to prevent further damage during the flight.

Didn't that happen...like two years ago or something?  :o

Never fly on a Chinese airline.  ;D

Wow.  That looks like its just BEGGING for a compressor stall

Glad the germans fixed it, it would have been terrible for there to be a fatality because of irresponsible behavior on the part of the airline.

Hard to get compressor stall when the fan has been strapped to the stators thus stopping it from turning. The ramp agent could not believe what he saw and called an tech from Lufthansa over. He in turn then contacted the LBA (Luftfahrtbundasampt) who grounded the aircraft and also carried out an audit of the entire aircraft and crew. Lufthansa replaced the engine and the aircraft flew on. This story is at least 4 to 5 years old.

Matt

(Luftfahrtbundasampt)

Oh geez. Stomach cramps.

Luftfahrtbundesamt.

Better...*Phew*

(Luftfahrtbundasampt)

Oh geez. Stomach cramps.

Luftfahrtbundesamt.

Better...*Phew*

OK, but why is it:

Die Stra

Hagar's right; those are large ratcheting tie-downs, not ordinary seatbelts... I've seen that before and didn't catch that.

Still leery of flying in Asia, however...

Hagar's right; those are large ratcheting tie-downs, not ordinary seatbelts....

I believe your right.


This post was from one of many emails I get forwarded to me from Northrop Grumman.
I don't know how I am on their email list,

They told me these kind of emails are always floating around NG's intranet.

Same with any large company. That's why things are always over budget and late, cos the lazy a***d workers are too busy surfing the internet for entertainment...

[partially, but not entirely, tongue-in-cheek]

[quote]
Die Stra