By way of introduction, I am the Senior Aircraft Accident Investigator
within the Royal Navy Flight Safety and Accident Investigation Centre
(RNFSAIC) based at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset. As well as accident
investigation one of my other tasks is as the Technical Editor of the Royal
Navy quarterly in-house flight safety magazine titled ‘Cockpit’. Recently
it became apparent to me that some of our RN aircraft maintainers and
engineers did not fully understand (or had forgotten) the risks involved
when working with and around high pressure aircraft hydraulic systems thus, as I have done with other issues in the past, I publish an article reminding people of the risks and associated mitigation. Whilst researching hydraulic safety I came across your PowerPoint presentation ‘Hydraulic Safety Awareness’. May I just say that what a superb, hard hitting and informative set of slides.
With your permission I would like to use some of the facts set out in your
presentation such as the hazards, temperature vs. time causing 2nd degree
burns, and so on. I do not propose using the personal detail of the case
studies and photos because we have records of our own accidents within the RN. You may be interested in 2 of which that spring to mind; in 1998 a Sea King helicopter crashed as a result of a hydraulic leak and fireball
initiated by arcing of a chaffed pipe and electrical cable. (Happily the
crew survived without serious injury) and a near fatal accident when a
maintainer got his head trapped between the closing nose undercarriage doors on a Sea Harrier during fault rectification work. In this case it was the quick thinking of his colleague which saved his life by emergency dumping hyd servicing rig pressure. Nevertheless the victim suffered severe crushing and fracture of his lower jaw. The manual selector was not correctly set and locked and the jack safety gags had not been fitted. The under-carriage door jacks, although relatively small, exert a force of just over 1 ton.
Yours,
Bob Vickery
Lt Cdr R J Vickery RN
Senior Investigator
RNFSAIC
Mil 93510 6622
Bt 01935 456622
Hydraulic Safety Awareness
11 May, 2009 — handsignsDear Mr Mac,
By way of introduction, I am the Senior Aircraft Accident Investigator
within the Royal Navy Flight Safety and Accident Investigation Centre
(RNFSAIC) based at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset. As well as accident
investigation one of my other tasks is as the Technical Editor of the Royal
Navy quarterly in-house flight safety magazine titled ‘Cockpit’. Recently
it became apparent to me that some of our RN aircraft maintainers and
engineers did not fully understand (or had forgotten) the risks involved
when working with and around high pressure aircraft hydraulic systems thus, as I have done with other issues in the past, I publish an article reminding people of the risks and associated mitigation. Whilst researching hydraulic safety I came across your PowerPoint presentation ‘Hydraulic Safety Awareness’. May I just say that what a superb, hard hitting and informative set of slides.
With your permission I would like to use some of the facts set out in your
presentation such as the hazards, temperature vs. time causing 2nd degree
burns, and so on. I do not propose using the personal detail of the case
studies and photos because we have records of our own accidents within the RN. You may be interested in 2 of which that spring to mind; in 1998 a Sea King helicopter crashed as a result of a hydraulic leak and fireball
initiated by arcing of a chaffed pipe and electrical cable. (Happily the
crew survived without serious injury) and a near fatal accident when a
maintainer got his head trapped between the closing nose undercarriage doors on a Sea Harrier during fault rectification work. In this case it was the quick thinking of his colleague which saved his life by emergency dumping hyd servicing rig pressure. Nevertheless the victim suffered severe crushing and fracture of his lower jaw. The manual selector was not correctly set and locked and the jack safety gags had not been fitted. The under-carriage door jacks, although relatively small, exert a force of just over 1 ton.
Yours,
Bob Vickery
Lt Cdr R J Vickery RN
Senior Investigator
RNFSAIC
Mil 93510 6622
Bt 01935 456622
Hydraulics Safety Awareness PowerPoint Presentation (680kb zip)