In flight emergency - CAMBER 119

Caught by HF monitors on Twitter, but passed off as a mistake, was an in flight emergency (or IFE) of callsign CAMBER 119, a DC-10 operated by Omni Air International on behalf of the USAF Air Mobility Command (AMC).  Registration was "N270AX".

Geir, from Norway however posted up his log today on UDXF (Sunday, May 8th) of the incident which took place on this past Friday, the 6th:

Checking through a recording from last Friday, May 06, I found a fascinating story unfolding. As I haven´t seen any reports in the groups, here are some details as they were heard on 5616 kHz with Shanwick Radio, times UTC:

1756 CAMBER 119 pos report 56N 20W FL 320 westbound, ETA destination 2329 (St. John´s?). relay info to Omni. Reachhunters lists this aircraft as N270AX, an Omni Int. DC-10 as they departed the UK - not sure what airport.

1846 next pos report 55.21N 029.12W FL 280. Shanwick advises that BIRK (Reykjavik) is 150 nautical miles closer than Shannon. Aircraft requested to confirm they were still heading to Shannon (EINN). I think there was a confirmation they had 365 persons board. Request to call Shannon VHF 122.980 when in range. 119 was hard to copy in this pos, so what had happened? It seemed they had encountered engine problems, and had decided to turn back. Level now 280, an hour earlier was 320

1850 Shanwick clears 119 to descend and "advise Shanwick as required", there were no other aircraft below them. Shanwick passed on latest Shannon METAR, and confirmed 119 descended even further to FL 260

1903 119 advised "need to dump some gas before Shannon" and requested permission for this, as they again would like to confirm there were no other planes below them

1906 Shanwick informed that fuel dump had been approved; 119 advised there would be a six-minute dump. Shanwick asked if 119 was still running on three engines - 119 advised they were now running two engines

1917 in the last 11 minutes Shanwick repeatedly called 119, no joy; and handed off other callers to 5649 (several N bizjets etc.). 1917z 119 was back, saying they had turned off the HF during the fuel dump, Shanwick confirmed they had assumed this was the reason for the non-response. Present pos 54.54N 022.38W

Aviation Herald also writes:

Incident: Omni DC10 over Atlantic on May 6th 2011, engine fire indication

By Simon Hradecky

 An Omni Air McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 on behalf of US Mobility Command, registration N270AX performing flight MC-119 from Ramstein (Germany) to Baltimore,MD (USA) with 352 people on board, was enroute overhead the Atlantic northwest of Ireland when the crew received intermittent fire warnings for the #2 engine (CF6, tail mounted).

The crew worked the according checklists, shut the engine down, but continued to receive intermittent engine fire alerts. The crew turned around and diverted to Shannon (Ireland) for a safe landing on runway 06 (runway 24 was active), vacated the runway and stopped on the adjacent taxiway, where emergency services checked the aircraft without finding any trace of fire, heat or smoke. The aircraft subsequently taxied to the apron.

Courtesy Aviation Herald: http://www.avherald.com/h?article=43c2d4fe&opt=0

So, the original Tweeter M0YFT, you were right all along!  Well done that man.

See his tweet of May 6th:

@M0YFT Tony Murdoch

Interesting comms on 5.616 an aircraft with only 2 engines running and about to dump fuel!