Do you remember my tale of Flopsy and the Easyjet Pilot from last week? One of the unfortunate recipients of this missive saw fit to forward it to his brother who’s an airline pilot with BA. This is his gem of a response.
“ It's lucky that the pilot had such good reactions. Hoovering a rabbit into an engine is a bad thing.
First you have to shut the engine down pretty fast before it does any further damage, bursts into flames, or anything else of a similar nature. Since most twin aircraft are taxied on one engine this would inevitably result in the sudden taxi performance of a glider. Plus the primary brake source would be lost, meaning that alternate brakes would need to be employed to stop the aircraft and keep it stopped. Nobody likes to rely on alternate brakes.
Next you need to get towed to somewhere to park. This will take time to arrange and will result in a significant obstacle being in place in the middle of a small but busy airport. The resulting delays for the arriving and departing aircraft would have a knock on effect for several hours, by which time the passengers on our stricken aircraft would hopefully have made their way from the back of beyond parking stand that is allocated to aircraft that are far from serviceable and would therefore disrupt a stand allocation plan that has very little in the way of slack in it.
Once the passengers are on their way, engineering can start with the boroscope examination to see how many fan, compressor and turbine blades have been damaged and to what extent. After this those clever engineering management chaps can discuss the situation with Airbus and Rolls Royce to come up with a recovery plan.
The most straight forward and quickest solution is an engine change, sending the sick engine back to the manufacturer for a refurb. Our aircraft could be back in the air on a Day 2 or 3, depending of course on how many engineers are around and how much overtime is available. Of course this is also the most expensive option but this needs to be set against the cost of a grounded plane that was planned to be working all day everyday and the expense of failing to get passengers to where they were promised within a reasonable time frame.
Option two is the in house damage limitation, stripping the engine down as skilfully and quickly as possible, checking that any damage to blades is within limits and taking appropriate steps to prevent further damage such as crack propagation. After a few days of this treatment and an equally skilful reassembly the engine can be ground tested before sending the aircraft aloft with 167 fare paying test passengers on board. The engine would need to be reassessed on a regular basis which will of course result in further disruption to our busy aircraft until it finally gets the engine change that it deserves.
And finally we need to consider the family of the poor rabbit concerned. Our late hero simply learned to fly, briefly, before a swift despatch at the hands of several hundred counter rotating blades. The knock on effect on his friends and family would last much longer. Possibly for months, if you believe everything you read in Watership Down.”
So, anyway, moving swiftly on, if you were wondering about Christmas and of stocking fillers for your teenager or god-child you need look no further than a book I’ve stumbled upon. I was musing earlier in the week, during a quiet moment at work, about a guy called Jo Welman aka The Foamer. He interviewed me when I applied for a job at Barings back in the way beyond. Well I say interviewed. I was sitting behind an old partners desk in a meeting room, having endured four sessions with various middle-aged/old buffers discussing the looming challenge of Big Bang, nervously braced for the next grilling, when a squat, moustachioed youngish man wandered in. I noticed immediately that the sole of one of his shoes had been strapped to the rest of the brogue with two thick rubber bands. These he had taken the trouble to paint with a black marker pen – a rare display of decorum as it subsequently proved. I relaxed just a bit at this sight, but my guard was still up as he sat down at the desk across from me and took his jacket off revealing to my surprise a short sleeved shirt ( from M&S I suspected ) and a pair of extraordinarily muscly biceps. “Arm-wrestle?” was his first question. Needless to say I failed on that front, but strangely we seemed to be cut of similar cloth and I sense that it was largely with his support that I ended up the first, and I believe only, graduate of the University of Leicester, ever to work for the esteemed house of Baring Brothers & Co. Ltd.
I must get to the point. I was doing a bit of Googling to see what Jo was up to now and find that he has written a book which I immediately ordered and arrived the day before yesterday. It’s not the most flowing prose ever, but I think you will struggle to find a better way to instil some understanding on the youth of today about what it is we do for a living and what they should be doing in preparation for the big wide world. Alas its out of stock now – I bought the last copy - but do try to get hold of one or download it onto your Kindle:
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