QF B744 maintenance

[Melburnian1]

Many of us appreciate that the vast majority of airlines are intrinsically safe.

It's therefore not a problem from that perspective when they have 'older' equipment.

I gather that last night's (21 April 2018) QF26 from HND down to SYD (that had B744 VH-OJS, 18.5 + years old) had a broken toilet in J class, and a defective toilet in the W cabin behind. So for the 40 something passengers who paid a business class fare with QF, there was one toilet for the flight on the lower deck.

This is on top of QF having previously removed toilets to squeeze in more posteriors on seats.

With the QF B744s having between 52 and 58 J class seats and 32 to 40 W class, this is poor.

Toilets can be defective for all manner of reasons. Older hands will recall that many years ago a QF male steward (as they were known then) was sacked for allegedly stuffing blankets down lavatories (stupid behaviour.)

That said, this aircraft sat on the ground at HND all day (since around 0500 hours local time) so you might think QF subcontracted engineers would be able to fix these defects.

An 'uncomfortable' trip.

Not good enough!

 

[moa999]

Depends when the toilets broke I guess.
I would assume QF would have some form of contracted maintenance at HND

 

[docjames]

It may be the toilets were working on arrival and only found to be broken close to departure (if not reported as broken, they would have presumably had routine cleaning only) or indeed may have broken during routine servicing.

To await repair may have taken too long and delayed flight / crew out of hours so choice then is delay overnight (inconvenient to pax, costly to airline), or just get pax and plane “home” and fix upon arrival. Yes lousy J experience, but a large % would have preferred the “get home” option.

 

[Melburnian1]

Apparently the toilets were defective on arrival in HND with staff endeavouring for four hours to fix without success.

This aircraft is presently winging its way back from JNB on QF64 so I hope the problems were fixed during the brief stop in SYD (QF26 to QF63.)

My informant says it's correct that most preferred to keep going (rather than have an extra night in Japan) but it remains unsatisfactory to have such poor availability of basic facilities.

 

[Toad]

Would of been interesting if the other toilet went U/S as well

 

[dttexitsign]

Apparently the toilets were defective on arrival in HND with staff endeavouring for four hours to fix without success.

This aircraft is presently winging its way back from JNB on QF64 so I hope the problems were fixed during the brief stop in SYD (QF26 to QF63.)

My informant says it's correct that most preferred to keep going (rather than have an extra night in Japan) but it remains unsatisfactory to have such poor availability of basic facilities.

I happened to be on the QF63 outbound after this sector and can confirm that said toilet problems recurred. We were told about 90 mins from JNB that several of the tanks were full and that we should use those in Y class, which most did, however as you can imagine the rush in that last hour led to some long waits (and anxiety for those 'last minute changers').

Interesting, as I've done this crossing dozens of times, and this is the first time I've encountered this particular problem. There are not many places to stop to get the lav's fixed if they all go unserviceable on this sector.

 

[Melburnian1]

On Friday 11 October 2019 QF63, as discussed in the delays thread departed SYD almost three hours late for JNB while the night B744 to HND, QF25 was cancelled. QF27 toSCL was also delayed.

All transport equipment can have problems, and there may be different reasons why each event occurred.

No one I know off asserts that the remaining QF B744s are unsafe but are there maintenance problems as the old darlings age further? Or are there crew shortages or something else awry?

 

[jb747]

Ah, toilets. The bane of most engineers lives. You'd be amazed at what some people put down them.

In most cases, fixes are quite simple...but you have to be on the ground.

 

[DMar86]

On Friday 11 October 2019 QF63, as discussed in the delays thread departed SYD almost three hours late for JNB while the night B744 to HND, QF25 was cancelled. QF27 toSCL was also delayed.

This would be due to Typhoon Hagibis, I presume.

 

[amaroo]

Ah, toilets. The bane of most engineers lives. You'd be amazed at what some people put down them.

In most cases, fixes are quite simple...but you have to be on the ground.

Was on QF11 a couple of weeks ago and they had to tape shut (looked like a crime scene) one of the F loos. FA told me the same thing about people and stuff put down the dunny.

I noticed the tape about two hours out of LAX, so could have been worse.

 

[trooper]

A380 : 130mph toilet flush

This documentary excerpt shows the development of the A380's toilets on a test rig in Hamburg and the speed of the resulting flush.

binged.it

Remembered this from some years ago....complex system!