American B772 near New York on Feb 21st 2010, burning smell

[joeyb747]

Below is the audio from the incident.

I was not able to find her once she went to NY center, so this is ground-tower-departure-approach-tower-ground. All dead air and chatter not pretaining to AAL 951 Heavy has been edited out. All ended well, with the burnt electrical smell still in the airplane when they parked at the gate.

At the bottom, is a pic of B777-223/ER N792AN (cn 30253/292), the aircraft involved in this incident.

"An American Airlines Boeing 777-200, registration N792AN performing flight AA-951 from New York JFK,NY (USA) to Sao Paulo Guarulhos,SP (Brazil), was enroute at FL290 about 20 minutes into the flight, when the crew decided to return to New York checking whether the full length of JFK's runway 31L (landing distance available 11250 feet/3500 meters) was available, but did not require any assistance. The airport dispatched emergency services into their standby positions as a precaution. The airplane landed safely on runway 31L about 35 minutes later and taxied directly to the gate exiting the runway via taxiway PA about 9000 feet/2750 meters down the runway, the crew indicating again no assistance was needed."

From:

http://avherald.com/h?article=427b2648&opt=1

[pinhead]

Hi Joey,

I thought this was quite an interesting and well compiled recording.

The pilot's voice is very monotonic and calm throughout. It remains so despite the burning smell and emergency landing. This is unusual although not extra-ordinary. I honestly thought he might be trying to cover something up but obviously would far rather my pilot be cool rather than panicked.

The burning smell was reported by two passengers one of whom implicated the galley as the source. http://avherald.com/h?article=427b2648&opt=1

There are a few other reports so far this year of burning smells shortly after take-off resulting in a premature but safe landing. e.g. OA382 on the 26th Jan, BE321 on the 26th Jan, QF42 on 14th Feb.

Seems common but it's better to be sure to be sure.

Regards,

Pinhead



"A paradox, it has been accurately said, has the same significance for a philosopher or logician that the smell of burning rubber has for an electronics engineer: it is a signal that something is amiss." (Medawar & Medawar, Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology , 1983)