Earlier last week, a FedEx Airbus A300 Freighter operating a flight between Boise & Memphis suffered a radio failure.
Such an incident is a frequent occurrence within the industry, with steps to be followed as a result.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
FX624 – Boise to Memphis…
FedEx flight FX624 is a routine scheduled freighter flight between Boise and Memphis.
The aircraft involved in the radio failure was N690FE.
As per data from Planespotters.net, N690FE is a 17.2 year old Airbus A300F4-600 that was delivered to the airline in April 2007.
Of the A300 Freighter variant, FedEx has 65 of them in the Express U.S subsidiary, of which all but 10 are in active service.
Furthermore, average fleet age for the variant at the carrier remains at 28.4 years.
FX624 departed Boise at 0813 local time on March 28 and initially climbed out towards Memphis.
As per reporting from The Aviation Herald, the crew experienced the radio failure pretty quickly.
It is understood that the crew weren’t able to contact Salt Lake City (SLC), which was their next sector.
Communications at Boise were reported to be “loud and clear”, but with SLC, it was the opposite.
From there, the decision was taken to squawk 7600 (The loss of radio squawk), and return and not continue to Memphis.
After around 30 minutes in the air, the aircraft landed safely without further incident.
Issue Fixed Very Quickly…
It is understood, as per data from RadarBox, that the issue onboard N690FE was fixed pretty quickly.
By 1031 local time the same day, FedEx flight FX624 departed Boise again and continued on to Memphis safely.
Since the incident, N690FE has operated over 15 flights without any incident regarding it’s radios.
The 7600 squawk code is utilized to let air traffic control know that they have had a radio failure.
This is so then the controllers can vector traffic away from the aircraft to prevent collisions.
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