An investigation has found engineers used the wrong troubleshooting procedure on a plane which suffered a malfunction after takeoff at Gatwick.

The Airbus had to land around 10 minutes after takeoff in February last year after one engine began to surge and the other stalled.

Abnormalities were reported on four previous flights after the plane was treated for fuel contamination but no fault was found when checked.

The investigation identified that:

G-POWN’s fuel tanks were treated with approximately 38 times the recommended concentration of Kathon.

The excessive Kathon level in the aircraft’s fuel system caused contamination of the engine Hydro Mechanical Units (HMU) resulting in a loss of correct HMU regulation of the aircraft’s engines.

A troubleshooting procedure was used for the engine No 2 stall that applied to a different engine than the one fitted on G-POWN. The correct procedure required additional steps that would have precluded G-POWN’s departure on the incident flight.

 
Crispin Orr, Chief Inspector of Air Accidents said:
“This was a very serious incident that in different circumstances could have had a catastrophic outcome. The safety of commercial air transport aircraft depends in part on redundancy of safety critical systems such as engines. However, fuel contamination can affect all engines simultaneously and so it is essential that maintenance regimes are resilient to errors that could lead to fuel system contamination.

“Five Safety Recommendations have been made in this report to regulators to promote the classification of biocide treatment of aircraft fuel systems as a critical maintenance task. This would ensure that an error-capturing method is included as part of the task.”

You can read the full detailed report here.

If you have news for Sussex and Surrey, contact us on news@susyradio.com