Delta 717 dual engine failure?

SlumTodd_Millionaire

SlumTodd_Millionaire

Most Hated Member
So I'm out at the airport today doing a repo flight, and one of our mechanics tells us an interesting story that he says he heard from a Delta guy. According to him, a Delta 717 crew was flying and watching a movie on an iPad, and they had set the iPad up on the center pedestal resting against the throttles so they could both see it. They start an idle clamp descent and the autothrottles come all the way back knocking the iPad down and hitting the fuel switches, causing a dual engine failure. They restart the engines and everything is fine afterwards.

Any truth to this? I tried setting an iPad up there while I was at the hangar, and sure enough, it would happen exactly that way if you had an iPad propped up there and the throttles came back. The iPad slides off and catches the fuel switches just right to lift them off of their gate and drop them to the off position. Still, seems like a fantastical story.
 
More likely they had the moving map portion of the EFB up, but we did recieve a memo about "placement" of the EFBs in the cockpit, and to be careful when placing them on the center pedestal. Yes it happened, but no, I haven't heard anything about a movie. sounds like that is an embellishment.
 
Cptnchia said:
More likely they had the moving map portion of the EFB up, but we did recieve a memo about "placement" of the EFBs in the cockpit, and to be careful when placing them on the center pedestal. Yes it happened, but no, I haven't heard anything about a movie. sounds like that is an embellishment.
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To be fair, do you know any crew who would disclose watching a movie when a much simpler explanation could be concocted that wouldn't result in firing :D?

"Yeah we were reviewing the arrival and I placed the EFB in the middle to brief it together then we took a call from the back and then XYZ and all of a sudden we lost both engines but we got them back, we're better than Sully because we can use the plane afterward!".
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Strongly worded memo to follow?

I bet Airbus jocks have never left a thrust lever in climb upon touchdown.

OH WAIT, yes they did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054
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That's interesting. On the CRJ we would get warnings whenever popping the de-activated thrust lever to reverse and it was an idiot light saying you screwed up. When I went thru Airbus initial I didn't bring the de-activated reverser into reverse and the instructor made a big, big point about how you always do both. I guess that story is the reason why. I never really thought it would be an issue but I can see in the Airbus it could be, although I don't know why you'd only retard one thrust lever from climb to idle in the flare. The same thing would happen in an aircraft without autothrust so I dunno. Anyway always nice to have some background on the procedures.
 
wheelsup said:
That's interesting. On the CRJ we would get warnings whenever popping the de-activated thrust lever to reverse and it was an idiot light saying you screwed up. When I went thru Airbus initial I didn't bring the de-activated reverser into reverse and the instructor made a big, big point about how you always do both. I guess that story is the reason why. I never really thought it would be an issue but I can see in the Airbus it could be, although I don't know why you'd only retard one thrust lever from climb to idle in the flare. The same thing would happen in an aircraft without autothrust so I dunno. Anyway always nice to have some background on the procedures.
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I consider the thrust control system design on those aircraft to be deficient from a human-computer interface point of view, because of that accident.

"Yeah we stick 'em in climb and then magic happens."

"No! No! Bad Frenchies! Bad!"
 
Does the 717 pop a RAT with dual flame out? I recently saw a CRJ taxiing in to SFO with RAT/ADG deployed. Never got the story on what happened, but odds are "operator error".
 
Cal Goat said:
Does the 717 pop a RAT with dual flame out? I recently saw a CRJ taxiing in to SFO with RAT/ADG deployed. Never got the story on what happened, but odds are "operator error".
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Nope. You're purely on battery power.
 
Cal Goat said:
Never got the story on what happened, but odds are "operator error".
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Maybe, maybe not. On certain Maint checks, we are required to go fly and manually deploy the ADG. Could have been that, however we have had one crew that had a Gen fail on after takeoff and after the APU was shutdown and instead of waiting on the FO to go through the QRH and properly verify which switch to reset, the CA reached up and turned the other one off and "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" the ADG deployed. He had some extra training after that.
 
That would explain the fuel switch guard on the Delta 717 that took me to work the other day. I asked about it and both pilots said it was added when they got them from AT.
 
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