Airbus 340 Flights to Antarctica

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yahya

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

https://theluxurytravelexpert.com/2023/04/19/airbus-a340-antarctica/
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.

https://hifly.aero/fleet/a340/9h-tqz/
 
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 got to go 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 shut 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.
 
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