Kudos to the Airbus flight crew in staying calm and professional in an extraordinary situation. They did their jobs and got everyone in their care to safety.
Yes, in a very critical situation of no radio communication and the aircraft's locator beacon disabled, rendering it invisible to ground tracking (why can't the private airlines resort to primary radar finding, as the military does?! (I just can't fully understand the reasoning behind this policy)
I know! If it wasn't bad enough they lost all communications but that at any moment they could have F15s breathing down their neck. (Don't pilots have cellphones w/a direct line to someone on the ground when they lose all instruments)?
The airplane had been in contact with Brest ATCC (France), when the controller noticed the secondary radar signal was lost about 10 minutes prior to a scheduled shift change. He tried to contact the Easyjet Airbus several times on radio without success. Attempts were made to contact the aircraft via another Easyjet on the company frequency and on the emergency frequency, without success. The ATC personnel feared a catastropic event. A westbound aircraft, flight AA-63, checked in shortly afterwards at FL320. The controller realised that there was a potential conflict with the Easyjet and commanded the American Airlines to descend to FL310 asking, whether they could see the Easyjet on their TCAS, which was replied to in the negative. The shift change took place, the oncoming controller reissued the clearance to immediately descend to FL310 to the American. The American now started their descent, the crew reported a few moments later, that they had seen an "Easyjet 737" pass overhead without being visible on their TCAS. ATC were relieved, that the airplane had been located but concerned about the close proximity to another aircraft. A few moments later the transponder signal of the Easyjet reappeared, one minute later the transponder code changed to emergency. The AAIB reported, that while the AC ESS FEED push button selector switch failed to reconfigure the electrical system in flight disabling the crew to restore power to the left electrical network, the system operated normally on the ground during subsequent testing. The crew could not verify the current selections of a number of systems, as the captions of the switches had disappeared and the switch positions did not change (significantly) with selection. An intermittent fault was found in an electronic component of the #1 Generator Control Unit (GCU 1), which probably caused the #1 generator trip on the outbound flight to Alicante. Recurrence of the GCU 1 fault probably caused the de-energisation of the AC BUS 1 and the following severe electrical system disruption. The GCU1 had been repeatedly been rejected from service, possibly because of the same intermittent fault, and returned to service without the fault being found. No system was in place at the GCU manufacturer's repair organisation to identify units repeatedly rejected from service and not found faulty or identify units suffering repetitive faults. Both audio cards of all three Audio Management Units (AMU) rely on supplies from the DC essential bus. The unit ceases to function when both audio cards are unpowered. Loss of the DC essential bus as result of the loss of the AC BUS 1 and AC essential bus renders all three VHF radios inoperative. Airbus have stated, that in the light of this finding they are evaluating if the power supply to the AMUs needs to be modified. Ciao ;)
Thanks for the report summary. During my time in avionics maintenance, there were occasionally rogue-LRU's that always passed SST but failed on-aircraft, even after extensive soak-checks. More often these units were yellow-banded & became 'ground use only' or bay slave items.
@@scottlarson1548 Sort of funny that inflight entertainment system has more redundancy than the plane's radios have. They also saved several cents on springs for the buttons in the cockpit so they couldn't tell by touch if the buttons are depressed or not.
I've been watching this channel for a long time because I have a morbid fascination with plane crashes. But instead of a fear of flying, they make me aware of things that can go wrong and how they either force change in routine plane management/design or they end well despite some big problems. I don't think I've ever felt safer. Thanks for covering the happier endings, TFC!
Assuming the pilots do a good job. There was a nighttime crash over the everglades where just two seconds before impact the first officer says "we're still at 2000 feet right?"
@@fortcrafterbossbehold9027 what does that have to do with this topic? Also….just out of curiosity do you even know how many commercial flights worldwide there have been in the last 10 years? Do not say it doesn’t matter, because it does!
@@christerry1773 Anyone can potentially lose their marbles, simply make a bad judgement call, be a bit fatigued, or just not catch something. It's the same reason one-man train crews are a really bad idea? One person can easily miss something small, but vital. The amount of work it takes to land a plane, or to keep it in the air if things go sideways, simply requires two people. AI isn't anywhere near advanced enough to do the job of a human brain. Will it get there? Maybe. But that's vaporware. AI is inherently _different_ from human cognition. It's alien. I certainly want to see what it develops into. I just note it isn't a human.
Thank God they didn't collide, and this is once again proof that pilots are real life heroes. The amount of things they have to deal with, analyze, decide and act upon during situations like these!
A competent crew become more focused, rather than scared; but we've all seen many of these videos where the crew become distracted or are judt5 plain incompetent. Not this crew though, handled perfectly.
Too many problem with this flight From system failure to almost an mid air collision Lucky they are survive but this will be the flight they want to forget in a hurry
Even when you’re 30,000 feet in the air flying your own tomb, the first troubleshooting step is still “have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?” Damn.
It's really scary to know that a simple little electrical problem can cause a very serious plane crash. Hopefully, these incidents will allow the manufacturer to correct these problems for increased aviation safety.
Incidence's like this always cause revisions and changes to aircraft. There's a saying "Aircraft manuals are written in blood" All the accidents get analyzed so we can make sure they don't happen or have a reduced chance of happening again. Whether its a change in aircraft design or aircraft operation, these revisions help make the skies safer.
As an Airbus pilot I can say this is not "a simple little electrical problem". That was an highly unlikely failure of several of the redundant electrical systems. And it didn't caused a crash...
@Pierrot LFSN as an airbus mechanic there was definitely something going on with the DC Bus, willing to bet there were no issues with the idg or apu generator. And had they deployed the rat, which they didn't need to, that would have eventually been another item to fail due to the actual issue. Wish I could review what they corrected
This is one of the best channels ive seen...Never was their a video I didn't like... everything is just so put together perfectly....the.chills and tears i get at the end are because it really draws you in as if you were the passengers😢or the families...as soon as i see 'the flight channel' pop up i drop everything and watch....keep up thre amazing works.This was way too close for comfort.. excellent job to the flight crew
Hats off to the pilots who kept calm and landed the aircraft safely. Pilots are amazing people who do extraordinary things and hardly receive any recognition.
That had to be terrifying for the flight crew. Despite that, and despite the fact that the plane was significantly harder to fly, they brought it down perfectly. Im sure the passengers didn't even know there was a problem. Those are top shelf pilots right there
Great pilots! Well trained, excellent crew resource management, and calm decision making in the face of potentially deadly problems. I'd fly with them anytime. 👍❤️
The skies are actually a mess of traffic. I can't imagine the feeling of knowing that all meters and comm have gone dark and you are just on your own. Anything could have happened. Thankfully, the crew showed superior airmanship, awareness, and used their training to get their craft on the ground and everyone in it safely.
How lucky were those passengers, the Easyjet crew did a brilliant job in bringing the aircraft home under extreme pressure, the fight deck crew were hopefully congratulated .
The radar controller has a button to push, that show’s primary target (airplane), but he didn’t push it. Also, there are lost-comm procedures, basically fly your flight plan to destination (unless you have a horrible situation), cleared route and altitudes assigned until you need to descend. From the tower, you look for their light gun signaling “steady green light, cleared to land”. We have procedures for every situation. This plane had multiple electrical problems. It was dispatched properly and legally, and no one was aware of the hidden gremlins, that day. It’s good it was daytime and good weather.
Well done to the EasyJet crew involved in this flight. A good example of CRM, with the Captain handing control over to the First Officer when he realized that the FO had some flight displays, when we've all seen other unfortunate accidents where the entire crew got distracted in the troubleshoot process.
These videos are so interesting, with everything that's involved with flying and then the process and the steps taken to solving the puzzle when something goes wrong. These videos are addictive.
Good luck! I hope you get to become a pilot one day. I had flying lessons when I was younger but then a completely unrelated event changed the trajectory of my life so that was my dream of becoming a pilot out the window.
No communication whatsoever, it's a real nightmare in the sky! They are very lucky, by not colliding during the flight but also when approaching Bristol Airport and when landing...
Great channel, man! Wishing you all the best, further development of your channel and wish all your dreams come true! I’ve been watching your vids for approx 3 years, and all of the are top tier. Even though I have no relation to aviation at all.
This should be clearly written in the SOP - in the event of radio and transponder failure, you must stick to the flight plan. This solution gives clarity to everyone in the environment (other pilots and ATC). The crew did a good job deciding to stick to the planned flight path until the happy ending.
I find it quite amazing, how is it possible, that 2 small (compared to the whole volume of the skies) planes going around 900kmh each can collide with each other...
I'm paraphrasing an old Air Traffic Controller from the UK who said: "Before ATC, planes flew by visual waypoints and very rarely would they collide in such a big sky, so we invented very narrow and rigid air corridors and forced all the planes down them, necessitating a controller to avoid collisions. And in that way, Air Traffic Controllers invented their own job"
I'm curious about the communicatio between the planes in the air and later atc at the landing side. Were the pilots lucky to fit in or did atc notice the problem and clear the air? Why didn't UK Airforce send planes in the sky to intercept them? Why didn't the atc at origin be alarmed by the missing plane (crashed?)
I'm not trained in aviation, but it seems like there are a lot of unanswered questions in regard to this incident. Why did the APU fail? Did the Gen 1 circuit somehow interfere with the other power circuits? Also, how did the pilots not have additional incursions if they had no communication with ATC for the landing approach? How would they even know if ATC got the Mayday call? Did ATC get the Mayday call?
APU didn't fail, AC BUS 1 failed. Under normal circumstances AC 1 powers the AC ESS Bus which subsequently powers the DC ESS Bus. Normally if this happens the crew can select AC Bus 2 to power the AC ESS Bus instead. But for some unknown reason this didn't happen. Transponder was set to number 2 a bit later in flight allowing it to be seen by ATC and other planes TCAS
ATC was aware of the inbound flight and that all comms had been lost. Procedure for the situation is to assume that the aircraft is in an emergency and will attempt to land as normal. So they effectively did have clearance to land, and all air traffic inbound to the airport was suspended until the plane was safely on the ground. The controller even sent a weather report on the off chance that the plane could hear him. Though I do find the idea somewhat amusing that a controller was looking at the tower at an easyjet that just showed up out of nowhere on the runway and left him slightly confused, thankfully this wasn't what happened.
Great post! Everyone like to talk about how Airbus is perfect, and super easy to fly. I think the pilots in the cock pit of 6074 might have a different position. I have great reverence for the professionals that keep us alive and flying around the world everyday!
I was a Chief Engineer/Designer on military aircraft projects and we always automatically routed essential avionic systems (Pilot's radio, IFF, TCAS, etc,) to the batteries in the event of total generator failure. The total allowable flight time in this configuration was carefully calculated and the pilots made aware in their handling and emergency procedures documentation. I'm amazed the civil manufacturers don't do the same.
Absolutely amazing! I have to think the daylight conditions is what saved these two planes and all their passengers. Great piloting but in the dark, awareness to dodge the other plane would have been lost. Strange to me that so many electrical failures on a new plane. Thank you for another great presentation.
Quite frightening that the pilots were worried about getting shot down trying to land somewhere else. Also, there should be a battery backup for communication in a situation like this.
YOu would think.. Apollo 13 lost All their oxygen, along with loss of water, electrical power, and use of the propulsion system. Yet they were still able to jimmy rig communications and re-establish power from Space with a computer less powerful than your cell phone!
Intercepted is not getting you shot down, there are protocols for non communicating aircraft, shooting it down is probably the last. If they were intercepted it would have likely helped them, as a guiding/comms buddy.
In case of emergencies Airbus need to include a pad of paper and a marker pen in the cockpit so that, when the military escort jets approach, the pilot can stick a note in the windscreen saying 'don't worry - we're not hostile'.
Well done the Easyjet Pilots, that was a very busy and stressful flight for them.I wonder if the passengers knew. TFC, thanks another excellent reproduction of the events and well explained.
How did they know where the airport/runway was at if all systems were down? And couldn’t them landing without ATC being aware cause a potential crash if another plane was landing/taking off from the same runway?
Not all systems were down, FO's instruments were still operating. ATC could see the after 10 minutes and once they would have seen them descend towards Bristol they would stop traffic
That is the wrong solution. There are already two radios and several redundant power sources. The problem was that a single point of failure existed preventing the redundant systems to work properly. Since then Airbus have rectified the way power is handled in case of failures so this kind of error should not happen again.
The left generator had backup systems for s reason. The second pilot never should have taken off again without determining the reason for the #1 generator ceasing operation. Note that the same restart procedure that failed to restart generator #1 also failed to restart the disabled electrical systems after they stopped working on the next flight. The same restart components that failed to restart generator #1 could service both the generator and the failed electrical systems. Checking for the cause of generator #1's failure might have uncovered the cause of the next power failure if all systems were somehow connected.
@jessicasnaplesfl7474 Agreed, I just knew at the beginning of the failure that something else was amiss, and there is NO way I would have taken off with that plane. Write me up, fire me, but I'll live to fly another day on a properly functioning aircraft.
Meanwhile, in a 3rd world country with barely average pilots, this incident would've resulted in the crew panicking, the captain refusing to give up control with no instruments, raised voices, an argument maybe, the FO ignoring the airspeed /altimeter whilst the plane accelerates into the ground. It'll be all Airbus's fault too. Thank goodness for well-trained US & European crews.
The AA captain saw or sensed something? If so, didn't know to climb or descend? ..But both crews are heros. Never would have imagined this. A great job with subtitles to tie the narration.
Not the most comfortable feeling considering only seconds made a difference in this situation. If that Airbus departed 20 seconds late it could have been a much greater incident. I could say the mystery of why the powers couldn't be restored would have been greatly troubling but it's plenty troubling now.
Might be a dumb theory, but any chance this issue with the APU cutting power and thus cutting off signal to the ATC can be similar to what happened to the disappearance of MH370?
Not the pilot no, but maybe I would expect the engineer at the airport to do so. Anyway, it was meant to be a humorous comment. People tend to be too serious I see.
Shouldn't the flight crew receive an award? Cause they absolutely deserve one! I've heard on this channel that there have been other cases where pilots did receive one.
I lost my new Garmin NAV/COMM unit while flying to my home airport. I had two radios, but both were connected to the COMM unit, so I had no communications. Luckily, I had a handheld radio that worked great 10 miles out. I know of military pilots who also carry a handheld. They come in handy on rare occasions. Now I carry two handheld NAV/COMM radios, so I have redundancy for the redundancy for the redundancy. BTW, Garmin replaced the unit for free and worked great ever since.
APUs have a service ceiling, since they cannot run faster to compress more air into the burners. They must turn at a constant speed to maintain AC current frequency. If you must maintain APU operation during flight, you must also stay below the APU ceiling. I am amazed that it continued to run at flight level 32 for so long without flaming out.
@@deepthinker999 For the A320 in normal two engines operating, there is no limit. It can start and run up to the aircraft maximum ceiling of FL390. With one generator in operative, the MEL states as one point "Aircraft remains at or below FL330," That is why FL320 was chosen for the flight.
What good would adding a sattelite phone do if they do not fix the electrical power source Adding a sat phone to the 2 working radios.. now they have 2 radios and a sat phone without power. Nett result 0 I would argue they first need seperate electrical feeds to the 2 radios , and a backup battery on those radios. The Sat Radio would be redundant at that point
OMG. sick to my stomach right now, I shouldn't have eaten and watched this 19 seconds was very close but kudos to the easyjet pilots for their calmness and assessment of the aircraft to continue the flight and land safely
Damn. Another mid air collision video. I request you to make one of Charkhi Dadri mid air collision as well, the mid air collision with most casualties. Such intriguing story combined with your quality of videos will be certainly what I await
The Airbus A319 had a dangerously defective electronics system. It’s nearly miraculous that a tragedy didn’t occur. The plane shouldn’t have been certified as airworthy. I would bet there were signs previously that something wasn’t right, but they were ignored.
I expect that some re-evaluation of the electrical system under fault conditions was carried out, it is entirely possible that things could have been restored to function had the displays and switches operated as expected, if you have buttons that don't clearly show their positions and/or display their status then it will be difficult for the crew to diagnose and rectify a problem. It certainly looks like the radio panel needs reliable power including emergency power from the battery bus if more than 1 of its supplies fail.
I was flying from Warsaw to Paris in the Fall of 2018. A plane flew within several hundred feet from us just before we were ready to land. I asked the Flighr Attendants and Cockpit about this and they all said it was nothing to worry about😮😮😮
This is very similar to another video I saw on a 'flight' channel (I can't remember which one) in which a passenger aircraft lost power due to a malfunction in one of the generators. On that occasion though the crew were able to contact ATC at their destination (they continued the flight, as this one did) and landed successfully. I can't recall the APU being involved in that incident
When did this occur? Did the investigation really not figure out anything about why the entire electrical system failed and all attempts at restoring power or communication (even with mobile phones near an airport at low altitude) failed?
Surely this must be wrong. The FCAS would not have worked as the Easy Jet plane would not have had their FCAS system enabled. From what I heard it was the French ATC that, in the last moments, instructed the American Airline plane to descend and that they saw the Easy Jet pass over them
In the event of a total communication failure , Aircraft on an IFR flight plan are cleared to follow their filed route to destination including an approach and landing as filed . ATC is responsible to clear the Airspace to allow for this situation.
RAT only powers the AC ESS BUS. The aircraft should have been able to power the AC ESS via the AC BUS 2 when pilots pressed the alternate feed button. Because it didn’t work they likely assumed that AC ESS was broken, therefore RAT would not have helped
