Comment by rolandog
1 year ago
Username does not check out.
Jokes aside... I'm certainly part of the intended audience: point me at an interesting rabbit hole, and there I gooo.
1 year ago
Username does not check out.
Jokes aside... I'm certainly part of the intended audience: point me at an interesting rabbit hole, and there I gooo.
Haha I didn’t parse it that way but I can see how you thought that upon rereading. I just want to understand why we would hear the RAT when there wasn’t an emergency overhead. I supposed planes regularly test them?
They don’t.
I'm not going to bother slogging through everything to be able to speak in specifics for every airplane ever built, but:
A RAT provides backup electrical and/or hydraulic power for control surfaces (and other goodies). A RAT would certainly be inspected during a heavy check and likely even during line checks (e.g. an "A" check or equivalent). How often is gonna depend on the airplane. But to suggest that a critical piece of equipment isn't checked regularly is just silly.
Additionally, it's pretty much guaranteed that if an airplane comes with a RAT the RAT is required to be functional for ETOPS flights. That alone means you're gonna be inspecting it pretty frequently. ETOPS certification has three parts: airplane, airline, and humans. You'd want to look at the ETOPS Maintenance Document at whatever airline to be sure.
Outside of Asia (where domestic widebody flights are still common) I'd guess many if not most 787 flights are ETOPS flights.
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