Looks like a nightmare scenario for plane passengers: you look out the window between bites of a mini pretzel to see an engine engulfed in flames, dropping pieces of metal in flight at 10,000 feet high. This is exactly the view that United 328 passengers received on Saturday, not long after departing Denver for Honolulu.
An approximately 500,000-pound jet with an engine seems as likely a candidate to fly as a condor with a wing. And yet, despite all the danger posed by the Boeing 777 flambé this weekend – and there was a lot, especially for the Denver suburbs subject to large-scale wreckage spilled by the plane’s Pratt & Whitney PW4077 engine – staying in the air was extremely low. in the List. In fact, your remaining engine is theoretically strong enough to have done the rest of the flight alone.
This was not always the case for large aircraft. For decades, the Federal Aviation Administration has not allowed twin-engine airplanes to travel for more than an hour, let alone from the Midwest to a Pacific paradise. “It will be a cold day in hell before I let the twins fly long-distance routes over the water,” insisted then FAA administrator Lynn Helms when Boeing asked the FAA to change the rule in 1980, according to Robert J Sterling’s 1991 history of the aerospace giant. If an engine failed, you would have at least two others to trust.
Eventually, the FAA relented, expanding the 60-minute rule to 120 and then 180 minutes as the 1980s progressed. Give credit to engines enhanced by the change in attitude, rather than an increased appetite for risk.
Passengers on United Flight 328 were alarmed to discover that the left engine had caught fire a few minutes after takeoff.
Photograph: Chad Schnell / Getty Images“An engine needs to have enough thrust to keep the plane moving and even to climb if necessary,” says Ella Atkins, an aerospace engineer at the University of Michigan. This applies even to the worst case scenario, she says, like losing an engine while you’re taking off. The remaining engine needs to be strong enough, if necessary, to launch it on its own.
This is not to say that engine failure is irrelevant, especially when there is a fire. It presents a series of complications, regardless of the size of the aircraft or the complexity of its automated systems. “Many pilots go through their entire career without a single engine failure, although we train for that,” says Bob Meder, president of the National Association of Flight Instructors. “In general, you make the memory items first for the plane you’re flying. You have a fire in the engine, protect the engine and stop the flow of fuel to the engine. “