|
Great to hear when a friend of mine has won 2 free
tickets on China Air from Vancouver to Beijing and wants me to go with
her! We were thinking of June or end of May.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 11:11
AM
Subject: Re: "Chinese Airlines...What A
Story!"
This story and similar photographs showed up on
AvWeb a few months ago, so I would tend to think it is true, as they are a
pretty reliable aviation news source.
At 05:10 PM 01/16/2003, David L.
Gomez wrote:
This was forwarded to me by my
cousin, Stan. I have no way of verifying
whether it is true or just some
trumped up story with some doctored photos.
However, if there is any
truth at all to this story, then I would want to
caution Jane--who I
understand may be going to China again this coming
summer--to avoid
flying on China Airlines.
Dave
"Chinese Airlines...What A
Story!"
Chinese Airlines--You won't believe the following story and
photos, but it
actually happened. It appears the only reason we really
need to worry about
the Chinese is that there are just so damn many of
them.
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 soon
became 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.
The attached photos show the condition of
the #3 engine when the airliner
arrived in Frankfurt with a load of
passengers. The engine had sometime
previously encountered something
hard, like rocks, and instead of changing
the engine, China Airlines
decided to immobilize the engine with lapbelts
and send it off with three
engines.
Hey, super human pilots can do such things! However, if the
pilots had
refused they would have probably ended up in a salt mine
somewhere. 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
stator blades behind, thus stopping any unwanted
windmilling (engine
spinning by itself due to airflow passing through the
engine during flight)
and associated uncomfortable vibration caused by
the severely
out-of-balance fan blades. Note that the straps are seat
belts. How
resourceful! After making the "repairs," off they were sent
into the wild
blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only
three engines!
Paris was their destination. With the increased fuel
consumption, they ran
a bit low on fuel, and just set it down a few
hundred miles from their
destination 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 bundle of money to get
the first engine
replaced (it 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 three
engines were eventually
changed on this aircraft before it was permitted
to fly again.
_______________________
Scott MacLean
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 9184011
http://www.nerosoft.com
|
