SF about to land near London

[Flying Illini]

www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com

 

[Flying Illini]

He apparently declared a mayday and diverted due to a generator problem...website says he avoided having to ditch. Doesn't make sense...especially when looking at his flight track...he was nearly to London when he made a 90 degree right turn to head to Bournemouth.

 

[LJDRVR]

Interesting to see what happens and what sort of spin the Fossett folks put on it. His "Generator problem" was probably the engine spooling down below generator cutout speed following a fuel starvation flameout. Or not

Congratulations at any rate, helluva acomplishment, but I have my doubts about this guy.

 

[Flying Illini]

What kind of doubts?

I don't think he diverted for an engine problem...the airport he diverted to was farther away than his original destination...unless what you say is correct and he was just heading away from cities to go plop it down in the nearest body of water...but upon looking at the map...it would have been closer to go for Bognor Regis instead of where he ended up. We'll see.

 

[MJG]

I was wondering why the news outlets didn't show the landing "live" as they had all promised. Guess you can't cover a landing event live when the landing occurs at a different field. Will be interesting to see what happened. Makes one wonder why the live video feed from their mission control doesn't include audio.

Maybe he had to go to the bathroom, real, real bad........

 

[MJG]

An Update:

From the website:

Congratulations to Steve Fossett, who has broken the world record for the longest ever flight in history and made a dramatic landing through the sunset - at Bournemouth Airport.
He travelled 26,389.3 miles and had a flight duration of 76 hours 45 minutes.
Just miles from his destination at Kent International Airport, Steve’s generator failed, which meant a total electrical breakdown.
He was forced to make an emergency Mayday call through to Bournemouth Airport, and was given a short window through which to land.
Chief Executive of Virgin Atlantic, Steve Ridgeway said: "If we didn’t get him down in fifteen minutes, he would have had to have ditched the plane."
The major problem occurred just after Richard had called Steve to congratulate him on his world record, which he actually broke when be flew over Shannon after covering the 26,000 miles required.
On landing, Steve burst two tyres, and his windscreen was iced up so much that he couldn't see even metres in front of him. Not only all that, but he had only 200lbs of fuel left; which if he had continued may well have turned into another emergency!
Sir Richard and Steve’s wife Peggy are with him at Bournemouth. After health checks a very tired Steve will make the journey to Kent International Airport to celebrate his amazing adventure.

Looks like he's already on one of the chase aircraft on his way back to the original landing destinaition.

 

[CRJDispatchKid]

He flew 76+ hours and never once called crew scheduling to declare fatigue!

 

[MJG]

Oh this is just getting comical now: MSNBC has got some idiot ITN reporter on the scene saying that Steve nearly decided to "eject" yesterday at some point while encountering turbulence. But hey his British accent is cool.

 

[PacoPollo]

He flew 76+ hours and never once called crew scheduling to declare fatigue!

Im sure JetBlue will implement that new rule....

 

[421Driver]

I got to poke my head inside the cockpit of that plane. I don't think I could ever spend 80 hours cramped up in there. I read at the begining of the flight, he had temps of up to 130 F in there. Yuk.

The instrumentation was cool, though. Almost everything was dedicated to fuel monitoring. Two little Chelton EFIS's, a few experimental style mini radios, and a satellite phone.

 

[Flying Illini]

why did they only give him a 15 minute window to land when he declared an emergency?!

 

[ultrarunner]

why did they only give him a 15 minute window to land when he declared an emergency?!

England is crowded!

 

[LJDRVR]

200 pounds of gas. I'll say it: Moron!

 

[LJDRVR]

Strange, if I landed any jet in the UK with 200 pounds of fuel, I'm pretty sure the CAA would violate me. Come to think of it, Mr. Fossett is a US certificated airman, flying an N-numbered jet. Why is it the FAA will try to violate a guy like Bob Hoover, while you can bet your last dollar they won't do a thing about some self-indulgent billionaire blatently violating the regs and unnecessarily risking his life and those of the people under his flight path for a superfluous world record flight with absolutely no significance outside of "Hey, look how much money I have and how smart Burt Rutan is."

 

[scangadah]

He flew 76+ hours and never once called crew scheduling to declare fatigue!

And he is carrying how many paying pax?

 

[Flying Illini]

And he is carrying how many paying pax?

scangadah...please make your avatar larger and post it in the message body...I'm dying to know what her shirt says. Yeah, that's it!

 

[MJG]

Big question is: how many minutes in that airplane does 200lbs translate to. 200lbs is roughly 29 US gallons. Wonder how long that engine takes to use that much fuel.

 

[LJDRVR]

Big question is: how many minutes in that airplane does 200lbs translate to. 200lbs is roughly 29 US gallons. Wonder how long that engine takes to use that much fuel.

I don't know. Maybe the CJ2 folks on here could pipe in. I doubt it's IFR reserves, though.