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Avro Vulcan XH588 / G-VLCAN has suffered a very serious blow to it`s Airshow season,when two of its four RR Olympus engines were badly damaged and will have to be replaced.

As this is a charity dependant on donations,this could possible be the end of the worlds only flying Vulcan,if funding is not sourced quickly to replace the two engines.

More info here:

http://www.vulcantothesky.org/news/354/ ... pdate.html

I've been following this on Facebook and twitter, very bad news indeed.

Word is that bags of silica gel were ingested, is there a use for these in maintenance? - I can't see them lying around on the runway.

JLAmber wrote:Word is that bags of silica gel were ingested, is there a use for these in maintenance? - I can't see them lying around on the runway.

Desicants that are placed in the engine containers during storage/shipping. But somebody goofed, big time.

miamiair wrote:But somebody goofed, big time.

Who should check the engines before start-up? Can the bags be seen from the ground?

JLAmber wrote:I've been following this on Facebook and twitter, very bad news indeed.

Word is that bags of silica gel were ingested, is there a use for these in maintenance? - I can't see them lying around on the runway.

That's exactly what happened. Cock up on the preflight checks.

Some silicon bags used to prevent moisture in the engines were not removed from the intakes prior to start up. When they engines spooled up for take off they went into no 1 engine which in turn took out no 2.

They have two spares fortunately so hopefully up and flying again soon.

Not for Farnborough though, which is a bugger as i was going to get a proper tour of the aircraft, although I've been invited to go up and see it at its home sometime otherwise.

Are there usually REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT streamers, or other bright red, on these? How big are they? I guess we're not talking about the little white DO NOT EAT packets I get in my electronics here

Is it just the fact that "something" was ingested, or is silica particularly bad? I'm thinking about the ash cloud and how that stuff was meant to melt on the way through and wreak havoc, though presumably these engines weren't up to temperature yet.

A case of Silica Enginitis...

One they get torn up, they will wreak havoc on any bearing surface. The Vulcan has a common air intake for each pair of engines, so someone didn't do a pre-run up inspection. They got lucky, complacency kills.

Image of the packs(they are about 4" X 9" and can be reactivated by putting them in an oven):



Sud-Chemie Catalog

As others have mentioned,it was very lucky the aircraft did not manage to take off.

Had the engines failed during climb out,or later in the flight,it`s almost certain the aircraft and her crew would have been lost,not to mention the possiblility of casualties on the ground.

The groundcrew and flightcrew I would assume are both responsible for making sure all the correct pre-flight checks have been carried out properly,and if in doubt go and check themselves.

It sickens me that yet again basic human error could so easily have resulted in the loss of iconic aircraft.

All concerned need a good boot up the arse!

I just hope the CAA are understanding. IIRC, they weren't too thrilled about this thing being operated by civilian volunteers in the first place, and they took a lot of persuading.

paul mcallister wrote:As others have mentioned,it was very lucky the aircraft did not manage to take off.

It was ready for takeoff when the engines failed?

Yeah, that could have easily been a disaster.