LETTERS
fiightglobal.com 30 June-6 July 2015 | Flight International | 33
IN-FLIGHT REFUELLING
Enough room for a boom?With the arrival of the Airbus A330-300 (Flight International, 16-22
June), some interesting nonstop services are close to becoming pos-
sible and environmentally desirable – if not economically proven as yet.
The great circle distance from London Heathrow to Singapore is
5,878nm (10,900km) and the A330-300 has a range of over
6,000nm. Thus, a Singapore Airlines A330-300 modified to receive
fuel from a boom could leave Heathrow with a full payload and receive
sufficient fuel from a Singapore air force A330 MRTT somewhere over
the Bay of Bengal to reach Sydney, Australia in one nonstop flight.
The distance from Singapore to Sydney is 3,400nm. This sug-
gests that with a potential fuel giveaway of up to 80t, the MRTT
could be co-ordinated to refuel a northbound flight from Australia in
the same mission.
What premium would passengers and freight pay for a nonstop ser-
vice between London and Sydney? And would Airbus consider modify-
ing a standard or VVIP A330-300 to receive fuel from an MRTT?
Matt Wood, Range-Unlimited
Sandbach, Cheshire, UKWe welcome your letters on
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industry.
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INTERNATIONAL
We welcome your letters on
any aspect of the aerospace
industry.
Please write to: The Editor,
Flight International, Quadrant
House, The Quadrant, Sutton,
Surrey SM2 5AS, UK.
Or email flight.international@
flightglobal.com
The opinions on this page do not
necessarily represent those of the editor.
Letters without a full postal address sup-
plied may not be published. Letters may
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must be no longer than 250 words.FLIGHT
INTERNATIONALA solid battery
of evidence
High humidity can cause false
fire warnings – two such incidents
were reported by the UK Air Acci-
dents Investigation Branch in2012. The interim Malaysian re-
port says the aircraft carried
4,566kg (10,050lb) of mangosteen
fruit, and that this was “of inter-
est”. False warnings on the MH370
route may not have been rare.
Much work is going on to re-
duce cargo hazards, including in-
pallet detection and suppression,
so why speculate further about
MH370? Unfortunately, the
wreckage is yet to be found, and
any scenario that altered aircraft
performance or crew reaction
would give a very different point
of likely fuel exhaustion on the
Inmarsat “seventh arc” to that
currently assumed.
Richard Lloyd
Coventry, UK
Not a big fan
In your article about the UltraFan
developed by Rolls-Royce and
Liebherr (Flight International,
16-22 June), the author states that
the fan will be driven by the in-
termediate compressor.
There is no way the compres-
sor can generate energy to move
the fan. Maybe he meant the in-
termediate pressure turbine?
Rodolfo A Serna
Bogota, ColombiaWhat’s Boeing on
with accounting?
Boeing is carrying forward enor-
mous losses on its balance sheet
relating to the 787 (Flight Interna-
tional, 28 April-4 May), thereby
claiming profits it hasn’t made.
Surely this cannot comply
with European accounting laws?
Any normal business writes off
losses when they occur.
J McDermott
Hereford, UKCan you thank Paul Burch for
successfully missing the point
(Flight International, 23-29
June)? Unfounded speculation as
to an accident cause diverts at-
tention from a well-defined risk
in aviation which is now becom-
ing prominent: lithium batteries
as cargo in aircraft.
I was the investigator in charge
of a UPS Boeing 747 accident
caused by an onboard fire lead-
ing to loss of control in flight di-
rectly attributed to these prod-
ucts, spending two years testing
the aircraft and the battery un-
contained fire risk. There’s no
second-guessing with the facts:
read the accident report.
No-one knows what happened
to [Malaysia Airlines flight]
MH370. Many commentators
have speculated over deliberate
crew action as a cause with no ev-
idence, while not addressing the
very real risk of a potential fire
source that is on every aircraft fly-
ing. If you are going to speculate
on an accident cause, back it up
with tangible evidence.
The crew of MH370 have fami-
lies, as well as the passengers. Put
yourself in their shoes before mak-
ing as-yet unprovable accusations.
Darren Straker
Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesFiring discussion
Darren Straker suggests a cargo
fire is a probable cause of the loss
of MH370 (Flight International,
16-22 June). All explanations are
speculation until wreckage is
found, but it seems more likely
than all the deliberate interfer-
ence and conspiracy theories.
Research has shown a fire in an
enclosed pallet of lithium-ion bat-teries can become fully developed
before any smoke warning, then
explode, scattering incandescent
material. This could disrupt the
aircraft communication systems,
either directly, or because the crew
pulled circuit breakers in the belief
the fire was of electrical origin.
Another risk is that the crew
might think a fire warning is spu-
rious. There was a hint of this in
the total loss of [South African
Airways flight] SA295 in 1987,
where the cockpit recording
shows it was the occurrence of
two fire warnings that told the
crew they had a real problem.Are we nearly there yet?Commonwealth of AustraliaTraining courses to take you there
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