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Originally Posted by seagull  More problematic is fuel cooling to the point it is like jello on long haul ops. It can be thick enough so the fuel pumps won't pull it in. I would not imagine that would be true in this case, as it should have warmed on the way down, and the fuel low temp sensors would have alerted the crew well before their approach. |
After a long-haul, high-altitude flight where the fuel has cold soaked, you won't have significant warming in the relatively short time period of the descent. The air is warmer, but it has a much lower thermal coefficient than the fuel (kind of like why you thaw a turkey in water instead of air--heat moves less efficiently in air).
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Originally Posted by rjmore I think if it were a fuel contamination problem there would have been other instances of this occurring out of PEK that day. |
But how many other flights flew that high, for that long? We don't know. And other flights may have had problems, but to a lesser degree, and they could have easily gone unnoticed or at least unreported.
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Originally Posted by Minuteman If fuel was a cause, I would have expected the problem to manifest more gradually and asymmetrically: one engine goes to a reduced thrust, recovers, declines, then the other has trouble later. |
I'm not sure why you would expect that. Both engines would have been feeding from the same tank. If gelled fuel went into the fuel lines, the reaction from both engines would have been virtually simultaneous.
Actually, to me, the gelled fuel scenario seems the most likely, especially given the unusually low temps that day and the long flight time of the sortie.