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The cold, hard facts about Flight BA38-by Capt G.A Fernando MBA Source:Island In my many years of flying, I have noticed that in the western hemisphere, winter weather is usually worse after the New Year than before. Perhaps the sting is in the tail. On January 16, 2008, I was operating a Boeing 747-400 flight from Singapore to London-Heathrow. Our night-time departure from Singapore gave us an expected arrival time (ETA) of a few minutes before 6 am on the 17th. The flight was uneventful except for when, somewhere over Austria, we encountered a spell of cold weather at high altitude which made our fuel temperatures drop well below acceptable levels. In my 30-something years as a pilot, this was the first time I experienced such a phenomenon, in this part of the world. Our indication of fuel temperature in the wing tanks (where fuel is mostly carried) turned from ...