Airbus 340 Flights to Antarctica

[yahya]

A private company flies a second-hand Airbus 340 to a blue-ice runway in Antarctica:

Review: First Class flight to Antarctica in a private Airbus A340 jet

Read here my review of my First Class flight to Antarctica in a private Airbus A340 jet with White Desert and Hi Fly.

theluxurytravelexpert.com

A friend of mine took such a trip recently, and reported that the pilots left one engine running at all times after landing in Antarctica before the same day return to the RSA. The participants of the trip were even instructed not to approach the running engine for safety. My friend could not establish the purpose of leaving a CFM56 engine running while on the ground. Officially, that A340 has a Honeywell GTCP331-350C APU (https://hifly.aero/fleet/a340/9h-tqz/).

Can our experts explain please if the A340 APU power could be insufficient to run all aircraft systems after landing on the ice runway in Antarctica? Reportedly, there is no power available on the ground on that ice runway.

Airbus A340 | Hi Fly

With a service range of 7,400 nautical miles, Airbus’ A340-300 is tailored to meet the needs of the long-range market – offering direct point-to-point services. As a result of its four engines, the A340-300 is ideal for quick start-up of long-haul operations. It also has good ‘hot and high’...

hifly.aero

 

[TomS]

It seems to be just an abundance of caution. If they had only the APU running and it failed, they'd have no way to start the engines, creating a single point of failure. Keeping an engine and the APU both running gives them options.

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/hifly-ends-second-season-of-antarctic-ice-runway-flights-on-a-high/

 

[yahya]

Thank you very much indeed for the explanation.

 

[publiusr]

I’m just glad to see A340s still flying. They are lovely

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Back in 1993 was lucky enough to be a specialist on the A340-300 cold weather certification demonstration. The winter 1992 attempt in Sweden hadn’t got cold enough so we going across the Atlantic. We flew to Denver, then Fairbanks but just missed the cold plunge from the artic*. So we flew to Winnipeg and waited for it to cross the continent. Approx four days later we flew to Iqulent. That did the trick and we left the aeroplane shit down, for 12hours in -42C static. In the morning we came back and it wouldn’t power up. The cold had reduced the battery voltage to below the threshold required by the system to run anything. We’d planned for this by taking a spare battery which was kept in the warm overnight. So this was taken to the aircraft, only for the time it took to put it in it got so cold that although it powered the Aircraft up it didn’t have enough to start the APU. We hooked up to external huffer to warm the cabin, then the battery warmed and the APU came online.

I remember one of the locals saying what a waste of time this was as they would just leave one of the main engines running during the really cold nights.

* we arrived just as a team from Boeing were doing the same with their 777-200.