Vh-qpa A330
 

Hi,
Just wondering, today I was at YSSY & notice a QF A330-300 VH-QPA climbing out of YSSY with its landing gear still down.
It arrived about 7:17am this morning but later departed around 11:40am. It left its landing down instead of retracting them. I kept watching it as it still hadn't retracted them when it was somewhere over the Homebush area.
The only reason i could have thought about it was to cool the brakes down but surely the brakes don't need roughly 4.5hrs to cool down :confused:. I could be wrong here but it just seemed unusual & the amount of drag being created wouldn't have helped to save fuel especially with the price of fuel these days.

Cheers,
Jayden

It is very likely that they were cooling down the brakes, as I understand that the A330-300's of Qantas are not fitted with brake cooling fans like the A330-200's. They would have been cooling down the brakes after it taxied out for take-off.

VH-QPA had the same problem here in Brisbane last Thursday. It taxied from the International terminal to the end of runway 19 at very slow speed, and then commenced its take-off roll only to stop suddenly as the brakes were overheated. The crew elected to hold at the end of taxiway Alpha for 10 minutes to cool down the brakes instead of taking off and leaving the gear down.

QPA,B,C,D should have fans on them, the others don't

Oh ok. It just seemed very unusual though but anyway.
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

Jayden

I don't think they would have a choice. The brakes have to be below a certain temperature before they can commence the take-off roll, in case of an RTO.

Ok gotta ask the dumb question. But why are the brakes so hot considering the aircraft is departing and should have only just taxied from the terminal to the runway?

Carbon fibre brakes.Remember the crew are braking on a regular basis as well.

Bloody nora, didn't realise the brakes got that hot taxing. Imagine how hot they would be bringing the a/c to a stop.

If you look on JP and Airliners there are night shots of aircraft where the brakes are clearly visible glowing red hot. Same thing happens in motorsport, plenty of shots showing glowing hot brakes.

FYI At the recent Singapore F1 race, the Carbon brakes got up over 1000 degrees celsius.