A350 Pilots Banned From Drinking Coffee in Cockpits

[yortsed snacilbuper]

In a new safety precaution, the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has banned A350 airliner pilots from drinking coffee in the cockpits to reduce the risk of spilling liquids on sensitive cockpit electronics.

The ban marks the EASA finally putting its foot down, after previous requests to Airbus pilots to keep their coffees and other liquids away from airplane control panels. Two incidents have occurred where liquids were spilled and led to engines shutting down mid-flight "after inconsistent output" from control panels.

The first incident involved the American airline Delta. The second incident is believed to have involved the South Korean carrier Asiana, where tea was spilled on the console and forced the pilots to divert the flight. Another incident occurred in a flight over the Atlantic last year, where an A330 captain found out that hot coffee can melt an aircraft’s radios after he spilled his own beverage.

link

[Blues Heron]

1. Sippy cups FTW

[crickets]

6. My very first thought as well. nt

[Sneederbunk]

2. Cocktails through a straw are OK.

[Brother Buzz]

3. Wasn't a pesky coffee cup was the culprit in the film, Fate Is the Hunter?

[yonder]

12. I remember the movie (or rather the spill issue) but not the name.

I've probably not seen it in 50 years.

[Brother Buzz]

15. That was one of the films that made it to television quickly in the mid sixties

I last saw it, like, thirty years ago on television.... late, late at night. The coffee spill was my total walk-away.

[Sherman A1]

17. Posted below

[dewsgirl]

4. There is a caffeinated water, Water Joe they could try.

[Mopar151]

5. Step softly

The electronics are sleeping......

[demigoddess]

7. If they aren't smart enough to keep liquids out of the reach of electronics,

they probably should not be flying passenger planes.

[jberryhill]

9. Statistics are tough to beat

There are a hundred thousand flights per day. Something with a one in a million chance of happening, happens every ten days.

[Sherman A1]

8. Fate Is The Hunter

Movie with Glenn Ford & Susan Pleshette from the early 1960s

[mainer]

11. I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that movie!

You'd think, with Hollywood films already addressing spilled liquids in cockpits in the 60s, that this problem would be fixed.

[Sherman A1]

14. You would think

That technology would have advanced since the 1960s.

[Green Line]

22. It was on TCM a while ago

I recorded it and watched last week.

[sdfernando]

10. Ain't fly by wire great?!?!??

But seriously, there are ways to mitigate this.

And a drowsy pilot has slower reaction time. 6 of one or 1/2 dozen of the other..sort of.

[demigoddess]

18. if they can take bathroom breaks they can take coffee breaks elsewhere

I have often been on flights where the pilot was seen leaving the cockpit to eat or visit the passengers, etc. That is why you have a co-pilot. Now if two people are needed at all times to fly a plane, perhaps they need two copilots.

[Flaleftist]

13. For $300+ million they couldn't design the control panels so that a splash of liquid

wouldn't shut down engines?

[ret5hd]

16. They are busy working on that pesky...

“if someone turns on their cellphone the airplane crashes” problem.

[NNadir]

19. I'm rather a fan of the show on the Smithsonian Channel, "Air Disasters."

I first started watching it with my son as he was going off to college to study Materials Science Engineering, since many crashes involve just that, materials science.

But yes, sometimes is something relatively trivial, like spilled coffee that causes a crash.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

20. "Smithsonian Channel, "Air Disasters."

I've watched a few of those programs, I remember one the flight engineer mistaking liters for gallons and running out of fuel, all kinds of crazy stuff?

[NNadir]

21. I wrote "Chapter" instead of "Channel." I'm losing it this evening. I'll go back and fix it.

DU lets you correct your typos.