A Boeing cargo airliner made an emergency landing in Florida on Thursday night after what its operator called “an engine malfunction” occurred shortly after takeoff, in the latest setback for the beleaguered company. A gaping hole where a paneled-over door had been at the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Sunday 7 January 2024 Boeing opens factories to airlines and adds more checks after blowout Read more
Video taken by an eyewitness and posted to social media showed the 747-8 aircraft trailing flames and sparks from its left wing as it circled back to land at Miami international airport at about 10.30pm.
The operator, New York-based Atlas Air, said the plane “experienced an engine malfunction soon after departure”. Its crew of five “followed all standard procedures and safely returned” to the airport, it said in a statement, adding it would conduct a “thorough inspection to determine the cause”.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday it would be investigating the incident, adding that the eight-year-old Boeing 747-8 aircraft was heading for Puerto Rico. Its preliminary report stated that an inspection after the flight had landed revealed a “softball-sized hole” above one of its four engines, but did not specify when or how it occurred.
The plane, colloquially known as a jumbo jet, is equipped with four General Electric GEnx engines. The pilot reported a fire in the left wing engine closest to the fuselage, according to cockpit audio of the emergency call.
It depends on what causes the fire. There is a shutoff valve at the top of the pylon that should cut fuel and hydraulic lines to prevent anything combustible going into it. If the fire is caused by a fuel issue outside of that, such as a leak above the valve, the halon will not be able to extinguish it. The halon also discharges into the cowling so if the cowling is compromised it can’t extinguish it, or if the fire is inside the core or in the tailpipe it won’t make a difference. Finally, it’s designed so that in the worst case that pylon will simply burn clean off the wing leaving the rest of the plane and 3 other engines to continue flying. If I had a fire like that in a mountainous region I wouldn’t even touch the fire handle until after I get to a safe altitude. So long as the engine is producing thrust the fire spitting out behind it doesn’t really concern me that much for a short while.
Gotta love sacrificial parts
Burning, multi ton engine falling from the sky is indefinitely safer than the other 3 and the attached passanger plane coming down, but sucks to be the person it hits.
If you see a plane having issues in the sky, try to move away perpendicular to its path. If it goes down, it’ll be hard to predict where it will end up since it can change direction as it dives, but anything falling off of it should generally follow its inertia. Though with thrusters, if there’s even a bit of thrust still when it detaches, it can also wildly change its momentum.
Another thing to remember is that if something is falling but it doesn’t look like it’s moving, it’s falling towards you. Again, move to the side and keep going until it looks like it is drifting to one side or another. Odds are very low that it will hit you even if you stand still, but that can help your odds if that makes you feel any better about it.
Oh, being hit by an aircraft engine is one of those thing where if it happens - sorry the universe was involved in that one. My tombstone would probably say something like “doesn’t like planes as much as he used to” or “here lies most of happy camper and a turbine blade we think has a smear or two”.
If it’s somewhere I need the trust for climb gradient it’s unlikely to land on anything important. A small chance of one tragedy is far better than a large chance of another.
Oh, im not being sarcastic.
Like how the mounting bolts are designed in such a way the engine falls off without taking the important parts of the wing with it - sucks to be on the receiving end but it beats the shit out of the other options.