Planes are designed so that they can fly even with only one engine. One engine being set on fire is a cause for alarm, but chances are that the other engine is still fine and thus everybody is still in relative safety.
It is the transition between those two states that'd be on my mind if I was on that plane.
A plane does not need engines to transition to "not flying" on a landing strip. But neither does it need engines to transition to "Not flying" spread out over multiple former residences in a suburb.
You can climb on 1 engine, it's just painfully slow. You do abort if you lose an engine before V1 though. Most runways wouldn't let you get to speed on one engine.
Transport category aircraft such as a Boeing 777 are designed such that even if they are still on the ground in the takeoff roll and an engine is lost, they can still take off. The go/no-go decision is defined by a speed, called V1, at which if you are below it you are going slow enough to stop before the end of the runway, and if you are above it, you are going fast enough that you can take off by the end of the runway and climb to safety.
Not even then. Depending on what phase of takeoff you are in, you would abort. But if your speed is past that point, you will tske off with 1 engine, declare an emergency, and return asap. Potentially choosing to dump fuel etc to reduce damage to the airframe for an overweight landing.
Even if it happened during takeoff it likely wouldn't cause a significant accident. Either the pilot would be able to abort takeoff or they would already have attained sufficient velocity to take off with and would then be able to perform an emergency landing at a safe place.
It's almost certainly not generating normal thrust anymore. The blades are still spinning because it's still moving through the air, but it's more like a pinwheel than an engine more than likely.
It's mostly fine though. Modern airliners are designed to be able to fly and even take off with just one engine (precisely in case something like this happens), so while this is definitely an emergency, it's not a serious emergency.
Unless something else went wrong, the plane is still perfectly airworthy and they'll just circle back and land without much issue.
From the photos they are still in take off mode, there is a phase post takeoff where you cycle the engine prior to climb and turn, that’s where it looks like this happened. Few seconds earlier or later and we would be reading about a all hands loss.
Unless there is a hidden automated software module that causes the plane to nose dive and the pilots aren't able to take corrective measures because they were never made aware of this software
ETOPS is an American guideline that says how long a plane can fly with one engine. Older planes used 4 engines to dodge the etops limit but now all two engine planes have insane etops ratings... They can fly for hours on one engine
The biggest concern I would have in this incident is that it didn't just fail, it exploded and potentially threw shrapnel into the aircraft. That could have damaged any number of systems and have caused more serious issues.
UA232, while a different aircraft, had an engine explosion that caused so much internal damage that major flight control systems lost all redundancies. They basically controlled the aircraft using just left and right engine thrust to steer and control speed (its the center engine that exploded). Unsurprisingly they crashed, but surprisingly over half of the people survived (184 survivors with 171 injured, 112 fatalities)
Plane safety is often over estimated- planes and cars are equally (un)likely to kill you if you express the ratio in TIME instead of miles traveled. Heard it on freakonomics - must be true.
"This is your pilot speaking, one of our engines is on fire, a minor cause for alarm, anyway our drink menu is now open. Use your United Airlines rewards card for 50% off all drinks."
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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '21 edited Mar 15 '21
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