I have not encountered one with a maximum speed, but the minimum effective speed is somewhere either side of approach speed. At least some Airbus aircraft pre-emptively go off the RAT (and on to battery) prior to apporach to prevent it loosing power at a critical time on approach.
None that I know of have anti-icing capability.

Had a good chuckle on the Nance comment :-)

I do very much appreciate the time you spend generating your posts.

In this case, I have to agree that Boeing is not out to lunch and I thought I mentioned that in my post, but I might have left it out.

This probably is one of those one in a million issues and sure, we didn’t talk about the other backups the airplane should have on board like the wind turbine.

I only have some time in 737 and don’t claim to be the expert on those turbines. Can they be brought out at any airspeed? Are they heated if the airplane is in icing conditions?

I’m curious.

PS - I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who thought some of Mr. Nance’s tales were a bit much.

Maybe. My point is, neither you or I know enough about that particular model of 747 to say. Were all the GCUs located in the same place - even the one for the APU? Could they have been isolated and reset? Were there backups available that were not yet activated?

Additionally, we are relying on a news article by someone who probably knows NOTHING about airliners, to extrapolate what-ifs. We both know there are probably significant errors or omissions from the story - in order to keep it digestable to the public and under a certain word count. We, however, don’t have the luxury of knowing what those errors are. So, we need to be really careful about speculation.

Now, I DO agree that it sure would have made for an interesting night! But, what would and would not have happened is more the relm of John Nance’s aviation fairy tales.

As a side note, I know Boeing isn’t totally out to lunch on the effects of water. I recall the 727 and models since then, having collectors and drain lines that captured and disposed of condensation from the cockpit overhead panel area before it dripped on something important. We could see the clear tubes running down between the windows, with water drops flowing.

Thanks again for considering my feedback.
Keep up the good work,

Bill

I probably should have been more clear that the airplane was going to fall out of the sky after this failure because like you, I know the engines would keep running.

But I do believe the end to the story might have been a little different if this happened at night in IFR three or four hours from a suitable landing spot.

I didn’t grab on to this to be sensational, but really because I made a connection to how absolutely vulnerable to a water spill this particular airplane had become just like the laptops.

As I said in the story, this should not have been able to happen, cracked drain tray or not. But then remember the 74 the blew up off Long Island?

No one ever thought flying those things with an empty center fuel tank could ever have been a problem either.

All this being said, you’re point about watching for sensationalism is well taken.

Consider me suitably warned about watching for that sort of dribble. My readers do expect that much.

Thanks for your comment.

I think you were being a little too sensational in your what-if scenario. Those comments are usually reserved for “journalists” who know little to nothing about aviation, yet seem to spew about it with authority anyway. (we all have read their misinformed articles).

The article did say that they since they were at a low altitude already they didn’t get to try “other things” (like starting the APU, isolating and resetting sections of the electrical system, among others). So that’s not the disaster scenario either.
While I can’t speak for the 747 fleet, all the long range, over water, two engine aircraft (and at least the 3 engine DC-10, and MD-11 to boot) are not simply out of luck when battery power runs out. They each have yet an additional generator - when even all the engine and APU generators go ka-put.
What they each have is a ram-air-turbine, that drops down into the wind and turns a small propeller hooked up to either a generator, hydraulic pump or various combinations of both. Now that won’t run large load items, but it is certainly enough to keep the instruments and a radio running. The Airbus A-330, which I fly, has a more sophisiticated scheme that switches between enroute critical items like weather radar, fuel pumps, and HF radios to approach oriented items like a landing light, landing gear control, ILS receiver, when the pilot selects.
Now, you should also know that the operation of the flight controls and engines on that 747 do not require any electrical power to operate that doesn’t come from an independent source on the engine itself. So, probably even the worst case scenario for that airplane is they have 30 min to an hour to get into VMC, and then fly on good old fashioned pneumatically operated standby airspeed, altimeter to a VFR landing, so your mention of “no flight instruments in the cockpit …nothing” was taking it a bit too far.
Now sure, it was an irresistable incident to comment on. But I would have hoped for a more accurate comment from an aviation professional.

Sincerely,

Bill