Re: Human Factors in ETOPS

Stewart Schreckengast (sschreck_at_mitre.org)
Wed, 13 May 1998 16:07:40 -0400

There have been several accidents where the wrong engine was secured. Some
because of aircrew misidentification, and some because of crossed wiring of
the engine monitoring system indicating the wrong or opposite engine. The
are even a couple of cases of fuel transfer mismanagement where three of
four engines were lost. Off the top of my head I recall an accident in UK
of the wrong engine being secured, and an ETOPS dual engine flameout from
Southern California (successful relight), and lots of light twin piston
engine fuel starvation and wrong engine shutdowns. Identify, verify,
feather is a very time critical process for light twins shortly after
takeoff; but, with most of the commercial fleet now using turbines there is
less of a time critical need to secure an engine. Anyone doing a
scientific analysis must watch the data and not mix fleet configurations or
go back too far. Because these types of accidents are very rare, it would
sure help to have more complete incident reporting.

Regards

Stewart

AM 5/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I would be interested to know what the perceived risk is of a dual engine
>shutdown (one emergency and the other engine shut down by aaccident) is
>regards to the ETOPS discussion. I have a hard time believing this is likely
>to happen but, being an Instructor, I'm smart enough to realize that if you
>can think of something that might go wrong, it either has at some point or
>will in the future.
>
>Don
>
>--
>Donald Anders Talleur email: dtalleur_at_uiuc.edu
>Assistant Aviation Education Specialist/
> Assistant Chief Flight Instructor
>Institute of Aviation- Willard Airport
>Aviation Research Laboratory- 244-8687
>Pilot Training- 244-8606
>
>Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up
>their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn
>up at all! (Sam Ewing)
>
>