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| 5/24 |
| 2005/3/4-5 [Transportation/Airplane] UID:36531 Activity:moderate |
3/4 A fully loaded 747 flies with only 3 engines:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/04/ba.jet.ap
Now I wonder if it can fly with just 2 engines.
\_ This is news? This is the reason there are multiple engines.
God you people are stupid. Do you have any idea what "tolerances"
and "redundancy" are?
\_ The fact that it can fly with three engines is not news. What's
news is that the pilot decided to continue its flight to an
airport 11 hours away instead of landing at a closer airport.
Redundancy in this case should be used to ensure safety, not
profit. Redundancy of this magnitude being utilized means that
there is little additional redundancy available for safety.
\_ You know not of what you speak. ask a pilot. If the FAA
gave them the okay, I trust them more than you. Ever seen
an engine failure on a trans-atlantic. Go tell _that_ pilot
he should land.
\_ '"We are concerned," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman.'
\_ I won't tell your trans-atlantic pilot he should land, but
I'll tell him he should land at the closest usable airport.
\_ Maybe they saved a lot of fuel with only 3 engines *shrug*
\_ In other news, SJ 757 flies on one engine:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/baycitynews/archive/2005/03/05/plane05.DTL
http://tinyurl.com/54pct (sfgate.com)
\_ Bah, try zero (0) engines:
http://www.silhouet.com/motorsport/tracks/gimli.html
\_ Thanks for sharing this, it's a really interesting article
\_ Wow, somebody on the motd is appreciative. You're welcome!
\_ except for a few pathetic old farts who like to
make disparaging and caustic remarks (you know, t*m and
ily*s) most of us are actually pretty nice and
appreciative.
\_ My guess is that it can cruise and land easily with two engines if
there is a working one on each side, but it needs four to take off
if it's fully loaded.
\_ Your guess is wrong. Almost stupid.
\_ Okay, so what is right, then? And what's your reasoning?
\_ You don't have 4 engines on a jet because you need the
power. You have them because you are carrying people,
and mechanical parts can fail.
\_ Are you saying that a fully-loaded 747 doesn't need to
be at full-throttle when taking off? And why most of
the jetliners don't have four engines? Mechanical parts
on twin-engine jetliners don't fail?
\_ It doesn't need all 4 to take off, but if one failed
that early in the flight, they would more than
likely abort. And with your addition there, I'm
convinced you're just stupid. Yes, twin-engine jets
have failures. that's why they have 2 engines.
Again, if it failed on takeoff they would try to land
as soon and safely as possible.
\_ I think I get what you're saying. You're saying
that 747s need only three engines while twin-
engine jetliners only need one engine, right?
\_ I'm not one of the posters above but
that sounds about right.
\_ I didn't know that a jetliner can safely fly
with one working engine on one side and no
working ones on the other side.
\_ what engineer wouldn't put a safety
margin on a plane where if one engine
goes down, the whole plane goes down?
\_ Engineers that designed single-engine
planes. :-)
\_ Just to make sure we all understand this correctly, the plane
LANDED with three engines, then TOOK OFF again with three engines
with a full load of passengers, because the captain thought it
was ok?
\_ Just to make sure we all understand this correctly, the plane also
TOOK OFF with three engines with a full load of passengers, going
from Singapore to London, because the captain thought it was ok? |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/04/ba.jet.ap -> www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/04/ba.jet.ap/ LONDON, England (AP) -- A British Airways jet that continued on an 11-hou r flight from Los Angeles to London after one of its four engines lost p ower also flew on three engines on a later flight from Singapore to Lond on, the airline said Friday. The Boeing 747 left Singapore on February 25 and landed at London's Heath row Airport the next day, arriving only 15 minutes behind schedule, BA s pokesman Jay Marritt said. Three hours into the 14-hour flight, an oil pressure indicator showed the re was a problem with one of the engines, which the captain shut down as a precaution, Marritt said. It was the captain's decision to continue w ith Flight 18, which was carrying 356 passengers, he added. "It's still very safe to fly a 747 on three engines," Marritt said. Six days earlier, the same aircraft lost power in one of its engines shor tly after taking off from Los Angeles International Airport. The pilot made an emergency landing in Manchester, England, about 160 mil es short of London, because the Boeing 747 ran low on fuel after facing headwinds that were stronger than expected, the Federal Aviation Adminis tration said. The failed engine was later replaced in London, Marritt said. The aircraf t then flew to Melbourne, Australia, before continuing to Singapore. It was the replaced engine that had to be shut down, the spokesman said. The FAA and British aviation officials are investigating the February 19 flight from Los Angeles to London to determine whether any regulations w ere violated. "We are concerned," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman. The decision not to return that flight after the engine lost power raised concerns about a new European Union law which requires European carrier s to reimburse passengers for substantial delays. US officials said they have no evidence the airline's decision to conti nue on was influenced by the regulation. "We would never compromise the safety of our passengers," said British Ai rways spokeswoman Diane Fung on Monday. |
| www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/baycitynews/archive/2005/03/05/plane05.DTL Email This Article A plane taking off this morning from Mineta San Jose International Airpor t was forced to turn back when the Boeing 757 airliner's engine failed a fter striking a bird, according to airport spokesman Rich Dressler. The Mexicana flight bound for Guadalajara, Mexico took off at 9:45 am Minutes later, a bird flew into the plane's left engine, causing it to sh ut down, Dressler said. The plane headed back to San Jose and safely landed around 10:10 am There were no reported injuries to the 154 passengers and crew on board. Replication, republication or retra nsmission without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. |
| tinyurl.com/54pct -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/baycitynews/archive/2005/03/05/plane05.DTL Email This Article A plane taking off this morning from Mineta San Jose International Airpor t was forced to turn back when the Boeing 757 airliner's engine failed a fter striking a bird, according to airport spokesman Rich Dressler. The Mexicana flight bound for Guadalajara, Mexico took off at 9:45 am Minutes later, a bird flew into the plane's left engine, causing it to sh ut down, Dressler said. The plane headed back to San Jose and safely landed around 10:10 am There were no reported injuries to the 154 passengers and crew on board. Replication, republication or retra nsmission without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. |
| www.silhouet.com/motorsport/tracks/gimli.html from an article published in Soaring Magazine by Wade HNelson If a Boeing 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet what do you have? Answer: A 132 ton glider with a sink rate of over 2000 feet-per-minute and marg inally enough hydraulic pressure to control the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. Put veteran pilots Bob Pearson and cool-as-a-cucumber Maurice Qu intal in the in the cockpit and you've got the unbelievable but true sto ry of Air Canada Flight 143, known ever since as the Gimli Glider. A computer known a s the Fuel Quantity Information System Processor manages the entire 767 fuel loading process. The FQIS controls all of the fuel pumps and drives all the 767's fuel gauges. Little is left for crew and refuelers to do but hook up the hoses and dial in the desired fuel load. The fault was later discovered to be a poorly soldered sensor. A highly improbable, one-in-a-million seque nce of mistakes by Air Canada technicians investigating the problem defe ated several layers of redundancy built into the system. In order to make their flight from Montreal to Ottawa and on to Edmonton, Flight 143's maintenance crew resorted to calculating the 767's fuel lo ad by hand. This was done using a procedure known as dripping the tanks. "Dripping" could be compared to calculating the amount of oil in a car based on the dipstick reading. Among other things, the specific gravity of jet fuel is needed to make the proper drip calculations. The flight crew had never been trained how to perform the drip calculatio ns. This was the factor writte n on the refueler's slip and used on all of the other planes in Air Cana da's fleet. To be completely safe, Pea rson insisted on having the 767 re-dripped. The refuelers reporting the plane as having 11,430 liters of fuel contained in the two wing tanks. P earson and Quintal, again using the same incorrect factor used in Montre al, calculated they had 20,400 kilos of fuel on board. In fact, they lef t for Ottawa with only 9144 kilos, roughly half what would be needed to reach Edmonton. Lacking real fuel gauges Quintal and Pearson manually keyed 20,400 into t he 767's flight management computer. The flight management computer kept rough track of the amount of fuel remaining by subtracting the amount o f fuel burned from the amount (they believed) they had started with. According to Pearson, the crew and passengers had just finished dinner wh en the first warning light came on. Flight 143 was outbound over Red Lak e Ontario at 41,000 feet and 469 knots at the time. The 767's Engine Ind icator and Crew Alerting System beeped four times in quick succession, a lerting them to a fuel pressure problem. "At that point" Pearson says "W e believed we had a failed fuel pump in the left wing, and switched it o ff. We also considered the possibility we were having some kind of a com puter problem. Our flight management computer showed more than adequate fuel remaining for the duration of the flight. We'd made fuel checks at two waypoints and had no other indications of a fuel shortage." When a s econd fuel pressure warning light came on, Pearson felt it was too much of a coincidence and made a decision to divert to Winnipeg. Flight 143 r equested an emergency clearance and began a gradual descent to 28,000. S ays Pearson, "Circumstances then began to build fairly rapidly." The oth er left wing pressure gauge lit up, and the 767's left engine quickly fl amed out. The crew tried crossfeeding the tanks, initially suspecting a pump failure. Pearson and Quintal immediately began making preparations for a one engin e landing. Two minutes later, just as pr eparations were being completed, the EICAS issued a sharp bong--indicati ng the complete and total loss of both engines. Says Quintal "It's a sou nd that Bob and I had never heard before. Starved of fuel, both Prat t & Whitney engines had flamed out. Pearson's response, recorded on the cockpit voice recorder was "Oh F___." At 1:21 GMT, the forty million dollar, state-of-the-art Boeing 767 had be come a glider. The APU, designed to supply electrical and pneumatic powe r under emergency conditions was no help because it drank from the same fuel tanks as the main engines. Approaching 28,000 feet the 767's glass cockpit went dark. Pilot Bob Pearson was left with a radio and standby i nstruments, noticeably lacking a vertical speed indicator - the glider p ilot's instrument of choice. Hydraulic pressure was falling fast and the plane's controls were quickly becoming inoperative. But the engineers a t Boeing had foreseen even this most unlikely of scenarios and provided one last failsafethe RAT. The RAT is the Ram Air Turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump tucked under the belly of the 767. The RAT can supply just enough hydraulic pre ssure to move the control surfaces and enable a dead-stick landing. The loss of both engines caused the RAT to automatically drop into the airst ream and begin supplying hydraulic pressure. As Pearson began gliding the big bird, Quintal "got busy" in the manuals looking for procedures for dealing with the loss of both engines. Neither he nor Pearson nor any other 767 pilot had ever been trained on this contingency. Pearson reports he was thinking "I wonder how it's all going to turn out." Controllers in Winnipeg began suggestin g alternate landing spots, but none of the airports suggested, including Gimli, had the emergency equipment Flight 143 would need for a crash la nding. The 767's radar transponder had gone dark leaving controllers in Winnipeg using a cardboard ruler on the radar screen to try and determin e the 767's location and rate of descent. Pearson glided the 767 at 220 knots, his best guess as to the optimum air speed. There was nothing in the manual about minimum sink - Boeing never expected anyone to try and glide one of their jet airliners. The windmi lling engine fans were creating enormous drag, giving the 767 a sink rat e of somewhere between 2000 and 2500 fpm. Copilot Quintal began making g lide-slope calculations to see if they'd make Winnipeg. The 767 had lost 5000 feet of altitude over the prior ten nautical (11 statute) miles, g iving a glide ratio of approximately 11:1. Only Gimli, the site of an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force Base remain ed as a possible landing spot. It wasn't in Air Ca nada's equivalent of Jeppensen manuals,but Quintal was familiar with it because he'd been stationed there in the service. Unknown to him and the controllers in Winnipeg, Runway 32L (left) of Gimli's twin 6800 foot ru nways had become inactive and was now used for auto racing. A steel guar d rail had been installed down most of the southeastern portion of 32L, dividing it into a two lane dragstrip. This was the runway Pearson would ultimately try and land on, courting tragedy of epic proportions. To say that runway 32L was being used for auto racing is perhaps an under statement. Gimli's inactive runway had been "carved up" into a variety o f racing courses, including the aforementioned dragstrip. Drag races wer e perhaps the only auto racing event not taking place on July 23rd, 1983 since this was "Family Day" for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Go-cart r aces were being held on one portion of runway 32L and just past the drag strip another portion of the runway served as the final straightaway for a road course. Around the edges of the straightaway were cars, campers, kids, and families in abundance. To land an airplane in the midst of al l of this activity was certain disaster. Pearson and Copilot Quintal turned toward Gimli and continued their steep glide. Flight 143 disappeared below Winnipeg's radar screens, the contr ollers frantically radioing for information about the number of "souls" on board. Approaching Gimli Pearson and Quintal made their next unpleasa nt discovery: The RAT didn't supply hydraulic pressure to the 767's land ing gear. Pearson ordered a "gravity drop" as Pearson thumbed franticall y through the Quick Reference Handbook, or QRH. Quintal soon tossed the QRH aside and hit the button to release the gear door pins. The nose gear, which fell forward against the wind, hadn' t gone over center. Six miles out Pearson began ... |
| sfgate.com Friday, May 14, 2004 Updated: 12:07 AM PDT ' I'm guessing that the best way to hail a cab or a bartender in Athens will not be by waving an American flag." Sorensen Capital group He's already got more money than god, but that isn't stopping Steve Young (above, right) from embarking on a second career in business. Gov's Balancing Act Schwarzenegger unveils revised budget containing spending cuts and (as promised) no new taxes. Wedding Date's Still On Same-sex marriage opponents lose bid to halt gay nuptials, scheduled to begin Monday in Massachusetts. Researchers say they've found evidence of impact greater than the one that probably caused the dinosaurs' extinction. Wars' $50 Bil Price Tag "It's a big bill," says Wolfowitz, who estimates the cost of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. No Plea From Anderson Using a wheelchair, the haggard-looking suspect is arraigned in the murder of Xiana Fairchild. Giants Left Stranded G-men leave 12 men on base, including two in the bottom of the 9th, and drop series to Philly. Sex, Drugs, And Then 5 Deaths Playboy Playmate tells how she got involved with 2 suspects, but left in just the nick of time. Pixar Growth Plan Wins Fans 20-year proposal for Emeryville site gets flak from activists, but city says go for it. |