Hey guys,

I think I found another little bugger:

During a longer flight to Tokyo, at some point I started to manually transfer the fuel from the Outer wing tanks to the middle tanks. Fuel temps were at -31°C in the OUTR tanks and the last time the auto transfer started when reaching -35°C so I figured I might as well start a bit earlier.

At start of transfer, the outer tanks had around 8000kg each still in them and when they got to around 3500kg I wanted to stop the transfer, which didn't work and it continued automatically until all the fuel was transferred. I don't know enough about that to say whether it's normal that you can't stop the manual transfer or not, so I wanted to add it.

The more obvious bug appeared when all the fuel was transferred. The "OUTR TK XFR IN PROG" message on the ECAM was still displayed:

Best regards,

Hi,

Thanks for your report!

I'll pass this along to the team for further clarification.

Thanks again!

HI,

It is not normal practice to manually transfer fuel on the A380. Only when requested by an ECAM. If deciding to manually transfer fuel without an ECAM refer to the Fuel Man Balancing Procedure. However, Outer tank Man balancing is not possible.

Actioning the Outer Tank Transfer push button switch (guarded switch for a reason) , should only be done if the automatic system fails, Fuel Temp Low ECAM (fuel must be transferred to another tank before it freezes) or no automatic alternate transfer is possible. The Transfer is then going to the respective feed tank. The transfer should however stop when turning off the Outer tank transfer push button switch. The transfer pump should turn off.

Fuel is normally kept in the outer tanks as long as possible in flight. The lift produced by the wing in flight creates an upward bending moment. Maintaining fuel in the outer tanks as long as possible reduces this wing bending moment. This is why the outer tanks are not completely filled on the ground as the opposite occurs due to the engine weight. Only exception is if all other tanks are already full. This is called Load Alleviation Transfer.

When the fuel in the outer tanks reach -35C cold fuel automatic transfer initiates. It transfer the cold fuel from the outer tanks to its respective feed tank without pilot intervention.

I have not seen or tested any of this in the Ini A380, so no idea how the sim handles this.

Hope this info clears things up a bit.

Edited 21 hours ago21 hr by Eurosky

18 hours ago, Eurosky said:

HI,

It is not normal practice to manually transfer fuel on the A380. Only when requested by an ECAM. If deciding to manually transfer fuel without an ECAM refer to the Fuel Man Balancing Procedure. However, Outer tank Man balancing is not possible.

Actioning the Outer Tank Transfer push button switch (guarded switch for a reason) , should only be done if the automatic system fails, Fuel Temp Low ECAM (fuel must be transferred to another tank before it freezes) or no automatic alternate transfer is possible. The Transfer is then going to the respective feed tank. The transfer should however stop when turning off the Outer tank transfer push button switch. The transfer pump should turn off.

Fuel is normally kept in the outer tanks as long as possible in flight. The lift produced by the wing in flight creates an upward bending moment. Maintaining fuel in the outer tanks as long as possible reduces this wing bending moment. This is why the outer tanks are not completely filled on the ground as the opposite occurs due to the engine weight. Only exception is if all other tanks are already full. This is called Load Alleviation Transfer.

When the fuel in the outer tanks reach -35C cold fuel automatic transfer initiates. It transfer the cold fuel from the outer tanks to its respective feed tank without pilot intervention.

I have not seen or tested any of this in the Ini A380, so no idea how the sim handles this.

Hope this info clears things up a bit.

Thanks for clearing up the correct procedure 👍

The automatic transfer from the outer tanks does indeed work correctly as soon as the fuel temps reach -35°C. It was only with the (not correctly) manually initiated transfer that I noticed I couldn't stop it again when started, in addition to the "FUEL TRANSFER IN PROG" message not blanking after all the fuel was transferred. Which is both probably not correct behaviour according to your comment.