Leaving all engines running at the gate

"John" wrote in message
...
snowy squirrel wrote:

John wrote:

Recently at SJU I saw an IB A340-600 arrive from Madrid that left all
four engines running during the 2 hours that it was at the gate before
continuing to Santo Domingo.

If you could see the engines turning, it means that they were shut off
and
just slowly turning due to wind.

It would be very hard for maintenance personel to get near the aircraft
with
all 4 engines running. And I suspect extremely hazardous (if not illegal)
to
refuel while engines are running.

It is far more likely that what you saw were just engines turning slowly
due
to wind.

There are situations where engines on one side are left running in
extreme
cold arctic conditions, and all passenger, cargo, fuel is handled from
the
other side. This is to ensure that at least one engine is available to
generate sufficient power to restart the second engine.

Nope, those four fans were running at a pretty good clip. No wind
involved there. Besides, with the size of those things, it would take
a hurricane to keep them turning for two hours.


Was the rotating beacon on? If not the engines were most likely
windmilling.

It would be to dangerous to leave one engine running at the gate. Let
alone four. Too many people and equipment in the area. Turbo fan engines
have a tendency of sucking anything that gets to close. Paper or a plastic
bag or plastic wrap that is use to wrap cargo. That's including people
too. There is just to much crape around the gate just waiting to get suck
in. It doesn't take much to damage one of those fan blades. At 20-30,000
dollars per fan blade (For a RB-211. American Airlines 757 ). I don't
think they will leave them running unless they want to be changing fan
blades more often on the A340.


aptim A&P