Liquids have been banned from certain areas of the cockpits of A350 airliners after a couple of diversions caused by spills on the center panels. The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued an emergency AD banning liquids from areas of the cockpit where spillage might muck up the electronic works of the state-of-the-art aircraft since a spill in the right place could bring the aircraft down. The AD also includes tips on how to clean up the spill. The action comes after two instances in which spilled beverages resulted in the shutdown of one of the aircraft’s engines and the crews were unable to restart them. In a worst-case scenario, EASA reasons, one unfortunately placed spill could result in the irreversible silencing of both massive Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines.
Un-eff-ing believable.
How do you design mission-critical control panels that are not spill-proof? Seriously.
And how do you not test for this? Again, seriously. Spill events certainly would be on my test protocol.
Ever break a windscreen in a hailstorm?
THIS is a different kind of a “storm.”
They’ve designed an airliner costing millions of dollars and can’t design in a cup holder in an out of the way place away from sensitive items? Every one of my vehicles has one! I bet the HondaJet has one?
Anybody who remembers Saturday Night Live’s “The Pepsi Syndrome” resulting in the Attack of the 50-Foot President knows how wrong beverage spillage can go.
Since liquid spills in the cockpit are fairly common, it’s surprising that it takes no more than that to trigger major aircraft systems. Maybe a rule requiring covered liquid containers in the cockpit would solve the problem. It’s cheaper than a re-design.
It’s a common problem in any high-button environment; it was - and I presume still is - a significant problem in the broadcasting industry, where coffee-loving humans sit in front of vast panels filled with electro-mechanical goodies. Fortunately the only crash it generated there was the s-storm of wrath that descended on the miscreant’s head.
The engineer’s solution would be membrane switches, but the tactile characteristics just wouldn’t fly (semi-pun) with the users.
Maybe flight crews should just have the good sense not place liquid containers on a complex electronics panel. For many years I’ve had a personal rule to have no liquids within a foot or so of my computer. Why take the chance of a spill?
Agreed; if the failure mode is “unfortunately placed spill could result in the irreversible silencing of both massive Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines” then how can you let the slip through testing?
Most modern Homebuilts use touch screens and digital circuit breakers for everything. Buttons/keyboards are soooo old school. Someday they’ll catch up…
Maybe it’s time to get the humans out of the cockpit
Some things don’t change. Between 1973 and 1975 I cleaned out numerous B-52 Autopilot control panels that were gummed up with coffee, sugar and cream because the panel was the best place to put an open coffee cup on the center console. Cup holders are a great idea. The hard part is getting lazy pilots to use them. Even better - design the console with an slope so the cup won’t sit there in the first place. As for flight testing for something like this? Get serious! Flight testers have a lot more important things to do during a test flight and scenarios like this just don’t show up in the test plan. I’m sure everybody thinks it’s important right now but it is truly an outlier in the giant bell curve of important aviation events.
