Remember the strange airline incident at Heathrow on Jan 17 2008? BA Flt 38 from Peiking to London developed trouble on final approach and barely made it to the runway. Fortunately there were injuries but no deaths. My question is: does anyone know what happened? The latest study I could find mentions cavitation damage to both fuel pumps. That is a clue, but it just pushes the problem back a step. There was plenty of fuel, why wasn’t it getting to both pumps?
The only way to know what “really happened” is to read the official reports. In the US these come from the NTSB & you can read about them starting from Home
In Britain, the AAIB is the relevant agency & http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/publications/index.cfm is the place to start. A keyword of “G-YMMM” (the accident aircraft’s registration number) will pull up everything they’ve published. All of which is reasonably summarized in the wiki article you linked to.
I’ve never flown the 777, but I have flown similar aircraft. This one is a real puzzler.
In normal operations at that point in the flight, the two fuel systems are independent. Tanks and pumps in the left wing feed the left engine & likewise on the right with no connection between them. They even have separate electrical supply to the pumps.
The aircraft has interconnect “crossfeed” valves between the two systems, but they’d be closed at this point.
Even if somehow all pumps failed, the engines can readily gravity/suction feed at low altitude & lowish power settings.
One engine failure due to fuel flow shortfall could be chalked up to some debris that somehow had gotten in a tank at some time in the past & eventually broke loose to mostly clog the lines. But both sides? Within seconds of each other?
Conceivably one of those crossfeed valves could fall apart internally & hunks of each valve could be pulled down the left & right side plumbing until they got caught. But that’s a pretty far fetched failure & there are lots of places for loose parts from there to get hung up before they’d get far enough to interfere with the flowpath from the wing tanks/pumps to the engines.
A lot of people are interested in this one and the best possible answer will eventually come out. It isn’t uncommon for that to take 18 months, and it’s only been 5.
Not only that, but I’d think they would have revealed that after a few weeks of tracing the fuel flow system. You’re absolutely right–this is a puzzler, especially considering they’re working with an intact aircraft & crew. I’d have thought they’d have figured it out in a month, tops.