https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending...afely-denver/IZRB4HOBEVHTDCKVKSNQSRNHTM/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trav...-colorado-plane-lands-safely/4526251001/

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Recently heard in the mechanic’s break room......”I got some of these left over, wonder where they went”! memtb

Best to have something like this happen 25 miles from the airport in Denver instead of halfway between the west coast and Honolulu.

My thought as well. My understanding is that the flight from U.S. mainland to Honolulu is one of the longest commercial "over water" flight segments in the world.

That be scary as hell

Especially sitting over the wing on that side....

Pucker factor 11, right there. I wonder what NTSB will dredge up...little voice in my head says "maintenance error." Just a wildass guess, though.

Bird strike?

Could be, but that's not what it looks like to me. It looks to me like all the panels were not properly secured after maintenance of some kind. I truly am just guessing, though. An A&P with experience on engines might be able to offer a better explanation...I'm just a lowly avionics guy.

Twin engine planes are just so much fun!

Until they arent, huh?

Twin engine planes have enough power to fly on one engine. As long as there isn't any other damage from the engine letting go, (ex. hydraulic lines, etc.) pilots are trained to fly and land it, at least in most First World airlines. The most critical time is if it happens right at liftoff. That being said, I still wouldn't want to be on one when it happens.

And that second engine can get you all the way to the crash site.

That Outer Limits episode with the monster on the airplane wing scared the 9hit out of me as a little kid.

But not as much as watching a seized, flaming engine out my window seat to Hawaii.

I would think compressor stall which is essentially an explosion in the compressor section possibly caused by FOD (foreign object damage, bird strike, or a fatigue induced failure of a compressor blade). That might explain the missing engine nacelle, etc..

Do you mean the Twilight Zone where the monkey was out on the wing ripping it apart? I remember that episode from when I was a kid, scared the H E double toothpicks out of me!

Seems like one of the Creepshow movies featured the same story. I may not be remembering correctly...but I do remember "thanks for the ride, Lady." One of my college roomies walked around saying that for months.

Pretty spectacular uncontained engine failure. The cowling isn't supposed to come apart like that and the FAA will want to research why it didn't stay intact. It's hard to say what caused it, could have been a bird strike or easily could have been some other issue, the NTSB will figure it out. Takeoff is when you're most likely to have an engine failure because that's when you're using the highest thrust, it puts the most stress on components. Another time is when you level off at altitude and the power comes back, surprisingly they'll sometimes fail then if the thrust bearings are weak. I had that happen as a passenger on a Delta 767 out of, ironically, Honolulu when we leveled off at 31000'.

Kudos to the pilots, they handled it well and everyone is back safely. I fly the 777 and it's a great airplane, it flies fine at max takeoff weight on one engine. They're designed to safely handle that exact scenario of an engine failure on takeoff. I'd almost rather be flying a 777 with one engine than most other planes with two or three.....almost.

Was that the episode with Lithgow or was it a movie?

You flyerfolk...what sort of changes in control and performance do you see with such an engine failure? A bunch of rudder to offset thrust? Are you fully hands-on at that point? How much speed lost? Happening when it did, what's the course of action? What happens if your farther from a suitable airstrip?

Lithgow was creepshow, William Shatner twilight zone.

It’s almost a third as long as the flight from LAX to Sydney

The 777 has a feature called thrust asymmetry control (TAC) where the computer automatically feeds in rudder to compensate for the yaw caused by one engine being out. It works beautifully so you don't have to give it much rudder. They designed it so it doesn't counter all the yaw, they don't want you forgetting which engine is out. Obviously it doesn't climb as quickly as with two engines. It's cold in Denver this time of year so that helps, it's high altitude so that takes away from climb performance. The fuel load would be pretty light since Denver to Honolulu is only six hours so they wouldn't be very heavy, that helps single engine climb performance. The 777 has big engines so no problem climbing single engine in this instance.

If it happens right after takeoff there's an engine out profile you do, you'll climb to 1000' AGL then bring the flaps up, get the airplane clean before you climb, you'd accelerate to 250 kts. Boeing recommends getting the autopilot on at 500' for less workload. You'd declare an emergency then climb up to a good altitude, at least 5000' AGL to run the emergency checklist which would direct you to pull the fire handle which shuts off fuel to the engine and discharge the fire extinguishing system. There are a bunch of other little items but that's the main ones. You'd then set up everything for the approach back into Denver and tell the controller you're ready for the approach. You'd land at a reduced flap setting because it gives less drag which makes go around performance better. It isn't a "I've got to land right now" event, it's better to take your time and get everything set up right than to rush it. The only real "I've got to land right now" events are if you're on fire (the engine fire here went out) or if there's a medical emergency like someone having a heart attack.

Generally if the weather is good there you'd turn around and land at Denver like they did. If the weather was bad at Denver they might have picked a better weather airport nearby to go to. If you're somewhere between the continental U.S. and Hawaii then there will be planned alternates and you'd go to the closest one. On that route the alternates would probably be San Francisco or Oakland on the mainland and Honolulu or Hilo in Hawaii. You'll have a planned "equal time point" between the two, if something happens before the equal time point you turn around and go to the mainland alternate, if it's after the point you'll go to the alternate in the islands.

That's the abbreviated version. Losing an engine isn't the end of the world, the plane's designed to fly fine on one engine.

Scary as all fuqk. I hear the plane was headed to Hawaii lucky this didn't happen 1000 miles off the west coast. Hula girl and I flew from LAX to Hawaii on an American 777 back in 2001

LAX-HNL is dwarfed by other much longer over-water
segments. B777 with ETOPS-330 has it covered concerning
OEI/SDA requirements to HNL.

2015, Air NZ was the first carrier to operate
under FAA ETOPS-330 with its 777 200ER.

Improvements in aviation tech and the requirement
to have a range of redundancy systems in place
means ETOPS has increased from the first FAA
approved rating. (B767 ETOPS-90 in the 1980s
to the current Airbus A350 with ETOPS-370.)

Pretty sure the 777 has engines that are very resistant to bird strikes. During testing they shot frozen turkeys into the engines at full speed. Didn't phase them at all. When you have a 2 engine jumbo jet that flies over the ocean a lot, those engines need to be pretty tough. That being said, something caused this catastrophic failure. Imagine being in that plane looking out the window at the burning engine. Major pucker factor for sure.

Ron

I'm comfortable with the thought that if it's my time to go then so be it, BUT, what if it's the pilot's time to go?

I was on a plane that left Denver en route to Los Angeles.

One of the engines took a schit and the pilot told everybody. I looked at the chick next to me and said "Why would he tell us? Just land the fugkin' thing."

It was pin drop quiet until we landed. He put it down in Grand Junction if I remember right. And the airline bought everybody Dominoes while we waited for a new plane.

Yay.

I take it that you fly out of MEM a lot...

Was she hawt???
I'd be tellin her that wez all gonna die anywayz so let's join the mile high club...

Not really.

Not that it really matters, but the article is wrong. Broomfield is west of the airport, not east. 🙄 That plane dropped its engine right before it started over the mountains.

Ok deflave911 your stories are getting a little outlandish

I didn't know where Broomfield was, but when I thought of where HI is in relation to Denver, this from the article struck me as wrong:

"Broomfield is located about 25 miles north of Denver and 30 miles east of the airport."

I read it landed "30 minutes after take-off". I was wondering about that, but crowhunter's explanition takes care of it.

Article is wrong. Broomfield is suburb of Denver metro area and west of the airport

Didnt matter anyway, did it. How was she?

Optimists see the glass half-full
Pessimists as half-empty..

Strange, because I'm normally a pessimist. It all depends which airline it is. After the major US, EU, Qantas, ANZ and maybe a few others, I really don't trust a lot of airlines. None in Africa, one in South America, maybe a couple in Asia. Just my personal views...

If one's goes to the smaller turbo_props NTSB
data shows multi-engine are 4x as likely to
result in death/serious injury than a single
like PC-12.

Many folks see it as illogical without knowing
the practical and technical reasons why.

Question for CrowHunter....

Worst case scenario 777 enroute to Hawaii engine goes out 1,000 miles off shore, how is fuel consumption/range affected when flying on one engine?

In that scenario what would be the best altitude/speed for conserving fuel?

Your optimum altitude is dependent upon several things, winds and the weight of the airplane being the biggest, we try to cruise near the optimum altitude for fuel efficiency. If you lose an engine at cruising altitude the airplane won't maintain that altitude single engine, you're going to have to descend. The optimum single engine altitude and airspeed, we call them driftdown, are going to be lower and slower. How much depends on weight and winds. Generally with the 777 if you're at 35,000' or so and you lose an engine you'll have to descend to the mid 20's and slow down some. The exact numbers were determined by Boeing when they conducted all the test flights, there are charts for it and it's built into the FMS, the aircraft's computer. You'd go into the FMS to get the altitude and airspeed then descend and slow to what it calls for.

It's going to burn more fuel for a couple of reasons, the first one being that you're lower and that always burns more fuel. Secondly you've now got a dead engine hanging out there that's costing you drag, plus the asymmetric thrust means the rudder is going to be deflected some to keep the plane in balanced flight which means more drag, more drag takes more fuel to overcome.

ETOPS flight plans are built around an ETP (equal time point), that's a point between the two alternate airports that's halfway timewise between the two. It's not half the distance (unless there's no wind), it's based upon flight time. That ETP is the most fuel critical point for an engine failure to occur, if an engine failure happens there then that's where you'll have the longest time to go to get to an alternate airport. The fuel planning is very complex and done by computer, one of the things it looks at is the required fuel if an engine failure happened at the ETP, it'll calculate how much fuel is required to driftdown and get to an alternate with the required reserves of fuel. The flight won't be allowed to take off unless it's carrying enough fuel to fly from takeoff to the ETP, lose an engine, then driftdown and make it to the alternate with sufficient reserves. Since the ETP is the worst place fuel wise for a failure to occur, any place either side of that means you have more fuel than you need. In your hypothetical scenario of losing an engine 1000 miles offshore enroute to Hawaii the flight would have left it's departure airport with enough fuel for that to happen and proceed safely to it's alternate airport, they couldn't legally take off without the fuel for it.

Yeah D
You should have said stuffed crust .....

The only thing really amazing about this story is that it doesn't happen 100X's a day.

How they keep those hunks of schit in the sky like they do is beyond me.

Flave has done all.

Flave has seen all.

Long live Flave.

It’s rare, but does happen...I was in a window seat on the wing flying out of Las Vegas at night. Just as we were leveling off the engine flamed, and blew. A lot a flames for a couple minutes.

Plane tilted to my side, then the pilot over compensated the other direction, then the plane settled.

Pilot hit the comms telling everyone we had lost an engine and would be returning back to the airport. Not a big deal.

Free drinks were on the next flight. Like I wasn’t already hammered.

LOL

🦫

Really interesting insight and information - thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the rest of the story.

Since TSA started getting gropey and making customers jump through microwave hoops with their shoes off and superman x ray vision, I stayed away from airports.
If it were just this risk, I'd still fly, but think twice and pray thrice.

Yep, not just here but in all those other countries that host an airline, especially given the proven mediocrity of some of their pilots. One would expect that would describe their maintenance departments too.

Good to know, tks.

I just found out that the person who filmed the engine burning is an acquaintance of mine.

Thanks for sharing that inside knowledge.

Even with it shut down, the air goin' through making the fan spin and the entire engine wobble... Lucky it didn't break off entirely... Good job by the pilots et al...