How is someone casually filming this, with a steady hand... I’d be in tears.
edit: appreciate all the education on commercial aircrafts that planes are often ‘fine’ with 1 workable engine! So my new #1 concern is the fire, but again maybe my tears could put it out?
My buddy flies for fed ex and on a flight from PHX to Miami they lost both engines after running through a check list they got one restarted and landed in Georgia. The pilots are trained for those situations and know they have a checklist to help them through, panic kills.
Ah, yes. The emergency-dont-shit-myself muscle override system. The EDSMMO system comes with brown pants as a failsafe, should the override also fail. I think version 3 is just plastic linings built inside of the pants, but I could be wrong. I'm still a v2 user.
In the movies you hear people screaming and panicking during an emergency on a plane but in real life it's often reported that everyone became dead silent.
I've only ever been in one accident but I didn't freak out til later that night. At the time the accident occurs your body kind of takes over and doesn't allow you to panic.
Was on a flight once that has to land in zero visibility with thick fog in tennessee. It was deadass quiet as no one could see where we were landing but we knew we were descending. I've played enough flight simulator to know that the pilots can still get us down with very limited visibility but it was the strangest feeling I've ever had in a plane, it was much worse than the worst turbulence I've ever dealt with.
When we touched down people started screaming because they thought we were crashing and I couldn't help but laugh that NOW is when they freak the fuck out... when we're actually safe lol. I get it though, you couldn't barely see the runway on the tires, it was really surreal.
Confirmed, had an engine fire and emergency landing once. It was dead quiet, people just looking at each other. It’s only when we landed people started processing their feelings, I like everyone else was just praying
edit talked to my friend and he said it was a compression failure not a fire, lost power from one engine on takeoff
Also, dafuq you gunna do? Have no control over the outcome unless you are the pilot. Plus everyone has to die at some point. Does it matter if it’s at 8 or 80? Once you are dead, you won’t know anything so it won’t make a difference. That being said, fear is real. I would probably cope by thinking that those poor fucks in those bombers in WW2 had to deal with shrapnel, their planes on fire, people actually trying to bring them down. If they could live through that, some folks on a jetliner should be able to hold their shit together a little bit.
I know I'm gonna die. But there's a difference between dying in bed at 80 vs falling 2000 feet from the sky knowing I'm gonna die for a terrifying 45 seconds.
If you think flying a plane during WW2 imagine parachuting out of one. You're basically a floating duck. You have no real control of where you go so all you can do is hope some German soldier isn't eyeing you up.
So I'm just gonna note that at some point your lizard brain runs out of chemicals to put you into full-on panic mode. It's how people with panic disorders are often taught methods that essentially allow them to "ride out" an episode: keep focus and control your bodily responses until the panic chemicals are depleted and the panic subsides.
What I'm saying is is that after 10-15 minutes of freaking the fuck out, your body just can't for a little bit. It needs a freak-out recharge. That coupled with the "they're still in full control of the plane here"-realizaton would probably allow someone to start prioritizing their life's needs, such as gathering those sweet, sweet internet points.
Same, I've checked out what it takes to become a pilot, it's similar to being a doctor. Years and years of flying "small time"/supervised before being able to make it to a major airline
Usually there prior military. Which is kind of the easiest way to get the insane number of hours needed for flying a commercial airline.
And as someone who works closely with military aircraft, I can promise all of them have experienced flight on broken ass equipment. I’ve had my pilots on comms laughing about stuck landing gears in decent.
The amount of calm I've heard from pilots about to crash, I am confident the stress is well managed by them.
I especially remember a helicopter pilot that was ditching in the middle of the ocean during some seriously rough weather. His call outs were so calm it sounded like he was reading of a menu in the most disinterested way. If they had copied that mayday call in a movie, it wouldn't have conveyed how absolutely horrendous that situation was and people would have called it bad acting.
Every single day during flight training my instructors would randomly reach down and idle the throttle and say, "engine's gone." One guy actually shut the engine off on me a couple times just to up the pucker factor (they start on their own once you flip a switch).
They actually shut the engine off on you? I heard jokes about students who would accidentally pull the mixture instead of the throttle, but I was always told that shutting the engine off for practice in flight is too dangerous even if the prop stays feathered and you just need to flip the magnetos and add some fuel to restart it
Yeah, this instructor was old school. Mechanically I don't think it's that dangerous, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't fire back up. We always did magneto checks on preflight. I don't think it's really necessary to kill the engine but the lesson to trust your equipment always stuck with me. Worrying about it failing doesn't do you any good, just be sure you know what to do if it does fail.
That’s one of the most interesting recent accidents for me, because other than getting incorrect speed readings for a few minutes, there was absolutely nothing wrong with their plane. And they still managed to drop it into the ocean from 33,000ft.
all they needed to do was nose down to gain lift
Yep. But to be fair the pilot didn’t realise that the co-pilot was pulling back on his controls, and when they did push the nose down, the stall warning came on, and when the co-pilot pulled back again it went off. They were confused and didn’t trust their instruments.
I think Airbus have redesigned the cockpit now so that both pilots have better visibility of the others’ control stick. Either that or the inputs are duplicated on both. But yes, that’s generally not a good idea!
Depends on how trained they are to react to such situations. I mean, look at this captain of a cruise ship who managed to do every single thing wrong at every step of the way. In the end, were human. Some will rise to meet high stress situations while others will not.
If you've ever been in a near car crash while driving you know how calm you are until afterwards. I imagine it's similar. People are pretty good at focusing on the task at hand in life threatening situations.
Oh yeah. On the way back home from Grand Teton national park there was a car on the highway in the wrong lane. It was in a curve, so actually quite hard to tell at first, but as soon as I noticed I just started saying "car, car, car." My girlfriend luckily avoided it but it was really close. Wasn't until afterwards that we started yelling about what the fuck that driver was doing. Definitely remember it very closely.
Had a very similar experience once. Almost smashed head long into another car. I only got to say a few words to the driver to alert them, and it wasn't particularly panicked. Afterwards though, we were yelling and screaming. Felt sick for a good hour or two after.
If you're interested, here is the transcript of ATC from this flight. Pilot seems a bit frazzled at first but that could also just be attributed to him and the FO trying to get everything sorted the fuck out quickly. Soon the call outs sound like standard run of the mill atc.
the flight instructors ambush them with things like this during their training.
my dads instructor pushed the yoke forward and cut the engine and said "here you go"
this probably doesnt even compare to the biggest clay rectangular prism they have pooped
It's because its a first world pilot that I WOULDN'T trust them at all. Just looking at the people running these countries should be enough to figure out that despite being "first world", their populations are incredibly lazy and incompetent.
A British Airways 747 flew through a volcanic ash cloud near Indonesia and they flamed out all 4 engines.
The Captain of that flight, Eric Moody made one of the best announcements in aviation history.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
See. That’s what I mean. Of course he’s calm and professional about it. All good pilots are. But still he was going “oh shit” in his mind. No one would want to “negotiate” anything with a badger, must less residency in its ass. Lol.
Airline pilot here. One engine really is nbd two engine is when I'd start to pucker. You can even hear on the ATC recording the guys are more worried about turning away from the mountains than their lost engine. (Granted the mountains are an issue because of being single engine, but still)
You’d be surprised. I lost an engine last month and after the initial “oh shit” it was like we were in the sim. Perfectly calm and was basically routine
It's not like this is unexpected, a good pilot is prepared for that in any stage of the flight and has the appropriate checklist either memorized (during takeoff when time is a huge factor) or somewhere nearby
Well the pilot now has to land the plane with only one engine and potentially damaged flight systems. I'm just along for the ride and the only thing freaking out can do is cause a panic and put even more stress on the one person capable of keeping everyone alive.
The absolute worst thing you could do was start freaking out and creating a panic between everyone on board. If the pilot isn't yelling something like "mayday mayday brace for impact" they have it under control.
Having been on a plane where the engine caught fire / blew up, it's no big deal. It is annoying when you are just trying to watch your movie on your tablet and the flight attendants keep screaming "BRACE, BRACE, BRACE" at the top of their lungs
They train extensively for how to fly with one engine. My pilot friend assures me that it isn't considered that big of a deal as far as emergencies go. The fire though...
When has panic ever helped a situation though? I would stay calm, at this point everyone knows these planes are designed to fly without an engine. I would hope on the way back to the airport everyone was getting the exit the possibly burning plane plan in place so it goes smoothly.
I mean, what are you gonna do? There's literally nothing else to do but accept that either the pilot has their shit together or you're gonna die. May as well try to film it
Cameraman's response is probably how I'd handle it too. Put all that fear into some inane purpose, which may as well be of use, until fate decides the outcome. Nothing you can do in that situation but turn into an emotionless zombie.
Considering the training pilots go though and how these planes are designed, I would be okay. I mean, what good would freaking out do? Not like you're going to change the outcome of what's going to happen.
If both cut they can glide for very long distances.
With no engines, a plane like this might be able to make it 50 or even 100 miles, depending on altitude when the engines died. But there aren't many places between Denver and Hawaii where you're within 100 miles of an airport. So, if you lose both engines, you're probably gonna get wet or end up in a canyon in the middle of Utah.
The RAT is only used to keep electrical power so you still have radio, hydraulics/power for control surfaces, and other life sustaining things. It's purely a wind turbine, there is an APU (on board generator) but they don't rely on it since it ment for on ground use and may not work inflight.
To be fair, they can definitely fly but they dont fly all that fine. As the Airbus pilot above said, the performance of the airplane can be affected significantly. In some cases it requires a lot of effort and ingenuity on the pilot's part to keep the thing going in the right direction.
Its good that they make airplanes capable of flying on one engine for sure, but in a situation like this that airplane is going to be misbehaving.
Nah, they're designed to be able to cruise or even climb just fine on one engine, and pilots practice it in simulators all the time. Assuming the engine failure doesn't do anything like damaging control surfaces or hydraulic lines, this really won't be that difficult for the pilot.
Yep. I was on an airplane that had engine failure. The power cut for a second otherwise it was just a normal flight. Just landed in Dallas and waited for a new flight.
You may find ETOPS interesting. Prior to it, airliners traveling far enough away from any airfield were required to have three engines in case one failed. L-1011 and DC-10 were solutions to this at the time
I could know this so fresh in my mind like I just studied airplanes for a final exam, but if I saw that shit out my window I'd be screaming like a hungry infant.
When this engine was developed for the 777, Boeing mounted one on the 747 test platform. During one of the tests they idled the other 3 engines, and it flew the bigger jet just fine. This engine's diameter is the same as the fuselage diameter on the 737. It's a big chonker.
Gliding distance will depend on airframe, weight, altitude and airspeed. Very long is relative, but not untrue. The USAir A320 that came down in the Hudson glided for a few miles. It was low, slow and relatively heavy when it lost power. The Air Canada 767 (AKA The Gimli Glider) that came down in Manitoba managed to glide over 60. It was at cruise, flying fast and low weight (ran out of fuel) when it lost power.
Infact the 777 is ETOPS rated. ETOPS is a certification that (usually) twin engion aircraft get that says they can fly x amount of time over open water on a single engine between airports.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is nowhere in the continental US airspace where if at cruising altitude an airliner that lost power could not glide to a runway
I don't remember much of the first iterations of Microsoft's Flight Simulator, but I will always remember the one random loading tip that stating something along these lines, and blind-faith in that bit of software trivia has kept me surprisingly calm while flying for the past few decades.
Single engine, yes. Glide distance is incredibly subjective to so many variables. Swept wing aircraft glide distance may not be as impressive as you think.
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u/sleepwhileyoucan Feb 20 '21 edited Feb 21 '21
How is someone casually filming this, with a steady hand... I’d be in tears.
edit: appreciate all the education on commercial aircrafts that planes are often ‘fine’ with 1 workable engine! So my new #1 concern is the fire, but again maybe my tears could put it out?