B757 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Confusion; Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical
Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem; General Declared Emergency; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft; Human Factors; Manuals
At FL380 Right pack overheat/off. Went to the book. First problem is that the book is confusing. There is an overheat procedure; there is an off procedure; there is not one for both. Since Off was on top of EICAS we started working that. Two minutes into this the SAME THING happened to the left pack. Now there is a 'both packs off' procedure that enters the equation. Used system knowledge; [advised ATC]; and started emergency descent. First Officer kept working the checklist. At some point I exercised emergency authority and hit the reset buttons; even though I was outside of the QRH loop. Both packs reset; EICAS clean; emergency over. Leveled at FL240. The cabin never reached 10;000 feet; although it go VERY close. Outside of the serious descent the pax and FA's  were not overly concerned. Good. I have to go back to the QRH and Monday morning quarterback myself; but at this point I can say the QRH was adding to the problem rather than helping. Here's my bigger beef. Called Maintenance Control the next morning and found out that they are ripping everything out of this airplane. Good. What I did not like to hear is that it did the same thing two weeks ago; resulting in a similar high dive. I would have liked to have known that; and I would have read the QRH before we left if you get my drift.
B757 Captain experienced a pack overheat at FL380 and the pack shuts down. Two minutes into the QRH procedure the other pack does the same thing. An emergency descent is initiated while the First Officer continues to work the problem using the QRH. At some point the Captain elects to push the pack reset buttons; without specific QRH direction and the packs reset. The Captain discovers later that the aircraft had a history of pack failures that was not available to the flight crew.