Airbus A350 Engine Shutdown Incidents Linked to Cockpit Drink Spills

This was the plot of the 1964 movie called Fate Is The Hunter...

Engine failure caused the spill, then radio failure then fire warning on the 2nd of 2 engines when it was actually operating fine.

Life imitating art?

Anyone who has spilled soda on a keyboard knows that they usually can't be cleaned and must be replaced. Replacing a $20 keyboard is way different than ripping out controls in a cockpit to fix the sticky mess. Maybe require sippy cups for beverages in the cockpit?

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.... Hydrate?

“A fourth plane, a 330 had radio problems on a spilt coffee”..

if a soft drink can kill one engine think what two soft drinks could do !!! pretty scary stuff , all sorts of $!%# ( things) happen you would think that a $5,00 Membrane under the controls or Key pad to seal it from liquids and dust on a 500,000,000 dollar plane would be in order

Pepsi Syndrome

Sounds like a replay of the 1964 movie "Fate is the Hunter". Difficult to believe that this obvious vulnerability still gets past designers.

With side sticks on Airbus taking up the Boeing cup holders spot (ignoring the tiller) real estate for cupholders is getting tighter. Its an expensive problem as this report explains.

https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2019/09/13/cockpit-cofee-spill/

Contigo cups are for $20 at Costco.

First one wasn't a Corona beer was it? Plane succumbed to Coronavirus?

The Japanese have a saying, "There is no medicine to cure stupidity"!!

Flying 101, "Never pass a fluid across the Center Console" !!

Recommend using Yeti tumbler cup, 40 bucks usd. Safety is no accident

Could that spill have caused both engines shut down uncommanded?

Fascinating. If this were a 77W with a GE90 shutdown due to pilot's clumsy drink handling, the headline would read, "Boeing, Already Plagued By The MAX MCAS, Has A Potentially Serious New Software Problem On Their Hands." Meanwhile, A350s are having engines shut down on their own, AND unable to be restarted, but hey, no big deal. Just tell the pilots to be a bit more careful with their coffee. Pilots have been dining in the flight deck since the dawn of commercial aviation, yet suddenly, 70 years later, we see RR, as usual, not getting their act together, like the Trent 1000, which has crossed the 2-year mark with no viable fix yet that would allow for full, unhindered (by more frequent checks,) usage of of the engine. Aviation news lately seems to be riddled with MAX/Boeing bashing, so much so, that when Airbus' flagship A350 has an in-flight shutdown, it's just fluff.

Have always wondered about that being an ex transit coach mechanic we had problems from day one when things started to change control wise with touch pads and such also shorting due to soft drinks. Don't know how large pilots have for drinks but some bus drivers containers looked like a half gallon.

But folks, it's not the straws...it's the humans that throw the straws in the ocean where they spear the fish and sink ships which causes earthquakes, releasing methane and all the dinosaurs die....

Am I the only one who read this as “engine shutdown on A350 caused pilots to spill their drinks”. ?

Let's face it, this is an ongoing problem. I don't remember the exact details but back in the years somewhere between 1946 and 1952 at Newcastle (?) airport in Wilmington, Del. there was a "TWA" Super Connie that couldn't land because it couldn't get it's landing gear down. I do remember it flew in circles (News on the radio) for at least 2 hrs. trying to cure the problem. What created/cured (I don't remember which) the problem was spilled coffee on the landing controls in the cockpit. They did get the gear down and lived happily-ever-after. Maybe one of you "Researchers" can find out what I talking about.

the question that needs asking is, what did you have for supper?
the chicken or the fish?
i had lasagne.

So here is the transmission on recommended practices for handling beverages on the flightdeck: "No liquids allowed on the flightdeck"! LOL!

...then there is the Pepsi Syndrome, a movie where they spill Pepsi into the control console of a nuclear plant and it all goes haywire...really though, Airbus never thought that thru? Seems like an urban legend to me....

With all the sensitive equipment in the cockpit and high tech surly a spill proof cup holder in a safe position is not beyond the boffins at airbus and Boeing ?am I missing something here .
Even the moskovitch car in the 60 s in Russia had a cup holder

Why not have cup holders on the window side, as other models do... would avoid lifting that drink over the pedestal 20 times a hour? ( between both crew..)

Well reminds me of Fate is the Hunter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO4RWODPjj0
Here it was a cup of coffee.

Install a Bar Bouy on the dashboard. Problem solved!

WOOPS

Thank goodness is wasn’t soup.

For soft drinks, a REALLY long straw might work so the beverage is kept out of the way. Coffee, not so much. Of course, straws are bad for the environment, so we probably should go down that road.

A number of years ago, while working at McDonnell Douglas in Arizona, someone knocked over a coffee cup on their desk and ruined everything in sight. Thereafter, a ruling came down..."no liquids allowed at desk".

Better give the pilots a sippy cup!

When I am at my laptop I do not drink anything over it. I'm on an office type swivel seat and I then back away and swivel away to get my drinking cup off of the table behind me. I take a good gulp and return.

Many years ago rotate Lockheed 1011 @ Caracas Venezuela at 250 feet over water 3 lights and bell came on. My capt was cool, bell off kept climbing up and did a 180 returned to departure runway rolled out and with the lights on cleared the rny. Water from fwd galley thru floor to lower compartment ands shorted electric sensors. Pan Am just got more experience.

How about a simple conformal coating (think some basic automotive electronics…) on the PCBs…. Yeah, spend a whole $1.00 (after all the mark-ups) to build up some resistance to liquids.

Oh wow.

now there is a feature that even a video game would not accept.

Remembrance of things past. 1980 New Year at Athis Mons (Paris) ATC center. A major telecom control rack was disabled, due to spillage of seawater from an oysters basket. The electronics engineer on duty left celebration, used plain water and dry cloth and when all was in order again, shared raw oysters with controllers. 40 years ago electronic devices were quite fragile but easy to maintain.

For me, this brought to mind the crash of Eastern flight 401 (an L-1011) in Dec 1972 on a night approach to MIA. It went down in the Everglades. As I recall, unable to confirm that all three gear were down, they went around for another approach while the flight engineer climbed down to physically check the suspect gear mechanism. Meanwhile, the autopilot had been disengaged (inadvertently?) and by the time they realized they were too low, the attempt to quickly regain altitude was too late. There were survivors, but many lives were lost. The cause of the initial problem was determined to be a burnt out indicator bulb caused most likely by spilled coffee in the cockpit. As usual though, several factors combined to cause this disaster. A book came out of this, as well as a TV movie, with Ernest Borgnine as a member of the flight crew.

So the Cost of putting the Aircraft down someplace ? and the Passengers who have to be inconvenienced plus all sorts of other factors involved too ? and all because the flight crew could NOT be more careful with their drinks ??? Wonder IF they were given a talking to by their Chief Pilot ? I was always taught at flight school....IF it can happen ? then it will.

When I first heard of this incident, “Fate is the Hunter” immediately came to mind.

Flying the A350? NO SOUP FOR YOU!!

.....well, that sounds like a problem/solution thing.........

To drink or not to drink is the question, and also how?

There shouldn't be any drinks in a highly tech cockpit at anytime!!!
Love the Japanese saying by G. Churchill.

I thought Airbus installed tables to avoid pilots placing cups on the center console!

Everybody seems to not see the obvious. A spilled cup of liquid in the cockpit should not be causing engines to shutdown. What if both engines shutdown? Should all liquids be banned from the cockpit? Fix the dam switches!

Ozark Trail $6.97 @ Wal-Mart -- rates the same as Yeti.

Cup holders ??

Maby we should have adults in the cockpit that can determine priorities. We are starting to see the level of maturity.......