Fuel Temp -22c (!) on 777-BA-Heathrow Crash [modified]

[pg az]

I just stumbled upon the most chock-full-of-facts video on the 777-fuel-ice story.
This is at airsafe.com http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/b777.htm[^]
About 4 minutes into the video there is a slide comparing the fuel-temperatures in the crashed airplane vs the recent single-engine-rollback of a Delta-jet, both temperatures being -22c, pretty cold hmm ! Also very early in the video there is a slide of a fuel-pipe with ice-on-the-walls due to a lab test. SUCH an excellent video. Nowhere else have I seen it mentioned that the BA-flight actually did change altitude specifically because the air was so cold, no details on that, imagine Leslie Nielsen wiping icicles from the ceiling.
Programming-wise, this would be a "corner case" for the design of the FOHE/Fuel-Oil-Heat-Exchanger - "WHAT IF" the plane has been flying for hours say over the Himalayas(both flights were from China-area, Beijing and Shanghai) and then it suddenly warms up on final approach to London-or-Atlanta, so that all of the accumulated ice breaks loose at once, as in software, so obvious, in HINDsight.

pg--az

modified on Thursday, March 19, 2009 11:34 PM