Engines Quit On Landing 787

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By Russ Niles | January 20, 2019

All Nippon Airways, Japanese authorities and Boeing are investigating why both engines on a 787-8 shut down simultaneously during rollout at Osaka Itami Airport last week. The engines quit right after the crew selected thrust reversers on touchdown and the aircraft rolled 8,000 feet before coming to a silent stop, according to samchui.com. The crew worked with technical staff for 40 minutes to restart the engines but couldn’t get them going so the plane was towed to the gate. 

A subsequent inspection revealed no faults with the engines but the website says a service bulletin issued by Boeing warned that mishandling the thrust reverse controls can cause the Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation system, which guards against inadvertent asymmetrical high thrust situations, to activate. The bulletin reportedly says problem can occur if the thrust reversers are deployed too soon after touchdown.

Comments (6)

Does no one do failure mode analysis any more?

Posted by: YARS (Tom Yarsley) | January 20, 2019 10:51 PM    Report this comment

"Thrust Control Malfunction Accomodation System"". TCMAS.. 🤔

Tell me with a straight face, that we haven't totally over engineered this new generation of aircraft/s..

Posted by: Tom O'Toole | January 21, 2019 10:01 AM    Report this comment

Too many systems engineers, too few reliability engineers !!

So now pilots have to start worrying about what "new" 'automated system Boeing has installed on their airplane that they don't know about ...

Captain to 1st officer: "Why are you doing that?"

1st officer to Captain" "I thought YOU were doing that?"

Posted by: Larry Stencel | January 21, 2019 11:37 AM    Report this comment

I wonder if there is any way to get Boeing to stop saving the pilots from themselves.

Posted by: mike boden | January 21, 2019 11:37 PM    Report this comment

I wonder if Boeing notified the airlines operating the 787, their respective pilots, airline training program staffers, and maintenance personnel of TCMAS like they did for the 737MAX MCAS through an obscure customer service "memo".

Is this another game of "Guess What We Installed on Your Airplane to Save Yourself From Yourself?"

BOEING sales management calls it GWWIOYASYFY for short. Coming to you soon in a brochure ....or after your engines quit on roll out. I guess Nippon Airways didn't get the brochure.

Posted by: Jim Holdeman | January 22, 2019 9:36 AM    Report this comment

I asked a senior British Airways 787 Training Captain and he knew the answer straight away...

The 787 is fitted with a protection system that detects if the engines have not gone to ground idle once the aircraft is firmly on the ground (and some other conditions are met). If the throttles are mishandled - i.e a big whack from reverse to idle - and the engine detects high N1 with the aircraft on the ground, it shuts off. The system is intened to save the aircraft from running off the end of the runway under power in the event of a malfunction.

A much bigger question is how much does a type-converting pilot learn, or need to learn, to pass thre type-certificae course? My BA friend says, "The absolute bare minimum required to fly the aircraft - it's all down to cost". Maybe we should be looking to the airlines not Boeing....

Posted by: Peter Ben | January 24, 2019 9:53 AM    Report this comment

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