Qantas crew use blankets to stop leak

Cabin crew attempted to use blankets to mop up leaking water on a Qantas Boeing 747-400 approaching Bangkok last month but were unable to prevent the loss of three of four electrical systems.

Crew told the flight crew minutes before cockpit systems started failing that that a substantial leak had occurred in the forward galley.

They later told Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators that they had tried to mop up the “smelly” leak using four to five blankets.

Investigators had initially believed the plane had lost all power and landed on emergency batteries after water from a blocked drain spilled on to electrical equipment.

However, they said in a preliminary report released yesterday that the electrical problem on the flight from London on January 7 was not as serious as first thought because one of the airline’s four electrical systems appeared to be operating normally. The loss of the other three prompted the autothrottle and autopilot to disconnect and the first officer’s flight displays to shut down.

The power loss also left the captain’s primary flight display, his navigation display and some other instruments operating in a degraded mode.

The 747, with 346 passengers on board, landed safely but the incident prompted US manufacturer Boeing to alert other 747-400 operators four days later to a potential problem with cracked drip shields.

“Post-flight inspections identified discovered a minor water leak in the forward galley sink drain and that an ice drawer drain was blocked,” the report says. “That inspection also found cracks in a fibreglass drip shield located above an electrical component rack in theaircraft’s main equipment centre, as well as evidence of dark liquid stains on the shield.”