Things Do Break
By Richard L. Collins
August 2007
 A while back a British Airways flight attracted a lot of attention when it proceeded (with passengers) from California to England after the failure of one of its four engines. The decision to do that was not made lightly. There was consultation with airline folks on the ground, and it was decided by the airline and the crew was decided by the airline and the crew that this was an okay thing to do.
After the fact, there was no general agreement that they had acted properly. Would they do it again? I don't know, but I doubt it.
There have been cases of the FAA going after a pilot for not landing at the nearest suitable airport after a problem developed with the airplane. But we all know pilots who have flown not to the nearest airport, but to the best maintenance site, or to home base, or to some other more desirable destination after the failure of one thing or another, including, in the case of twins, one engine.
There is little guidance (other than common sense) here. The rule (91.213) on inoperative instruments and equipment deals with what has to be working when you take off. The required equipment is covered in the FARs and in the Pilot's Operating Handbook. Whatever you do following an in-flight failure will always be okay if you don't have a problem that brings it to the attention of the FAA, and if you don't brag about it to such a wide audience that the FAA hears about it.
If the FAA becomes involved, they can go after you with the "careless and reckless" rule, 91.13. The rule does say that you have to endanger the life or property of another to be guilty. If you were solo, they'd have to prove you endangered lives and property on the ground by flying a wounded airplane a distance after the failure of anything. And I am sure they would prove that you did just that.
A recent event brought new meaning to the essential nature of the electrical system in one of the newest airplanes. A Diamond Twin Star, in Europe, had a dead battery. It was jump-started. As it flew away, when the pilot retracted the landing gear the electrical fluctuation caused by the activation of the gear wasn't covered by the weak battery, and both engines quit and the props feathered. Nobody saw that coming and it will be fixed.
Almost all the new glass cockpit airplanes are totally electric (the Cessnas are an exception with vacuum standby instruments), so understanding everything there is to know about the electrical systems and backups in these airplanes is as important as that battery was to the Twin Star pilot.
In case of a problem, there are many areas that are open to interpretation.
The certification rules require that the aircraft battery be adequate to run essential equipment for 30 minutes after the failure of the charging system. If you have only one charging system and it fails, that nearest suitable airport had best be close by.
A lot of new airplanes have a small standby alternator made by B&C Specialty. It is also available as a retrofit for a lot of airplanes. My airplane has always had an unreliable charging system, so as soon as this B&C unit became available I bought one.
With dual charging systems the question relates to what you do if one of the two fails?
My POH gives a procedure to use if the red low-voltage light illuminates during flight. After and if that procedure extinguishes the red light, it calls for nothing further. If the light illuminates again, it says to turn off as much as possible and terminate the flight as soon as practical.
Because my B&C alternator will keep the red light off after a failure of the primary alternator, what would the deal be there?
Each thing added to an airplane has to have its own flight manual supplement, and the one from B&C, which was undoubtedly approved by the FAA, says that after a primary alternator failure the flight should be terminated as soon as practical only if the standby alternator "on" annunciator does not light.
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