RE: Take off drama
 

Yes, it was…truly awful indeed.

Thanks,

Beave

RE: Take off drama
 

David, I totally agree that this situation was handled correctly, but maybe the thread took a wrong direction because everybody started talking of fire. This plane was never on fire and the crew applied the correct abnormal chesklist for "Engine limit/surge/stall" (737 term).

The crew never had a fire indication, the R/T call confirms this: "Mayday, engine failure". I think you would call "Fire" if the bell was ringing.
They acted according to the procedure: Disconnected autothrottle, retarded thrust on no2 and found out they could not operate the engine inside the parameters and shut it down.
I am only puzzled by the lack of yaw oscillations, we trained this maneuvre in the sim last week, and it was a handful, maybe this engine was destroyed to the point of hardly producing thrust at all.

Per

RE: Take off drama
 

What I find most interesting from watching that video is the lack of any measurable assymetric thrust issues. It would seem the right engine was making some fairly usable thrust still as there is no perceptible rudder usage.

It's easy to second guess the pilot and crew, but the fact is they got the aircraft down safely with zero injuries.

RE: Take off drama
 

If you look at the rudder, there was little deflection relatively speaking on the initial climb out. I bet they still had plenty of thrust initially but also vibration and the engine was surging and torching as it was tearing itself apart before the manual shutdown by the pilots at a safe altitude (company standard acceleration altitude at least). The one thing with a bird strike is that the engine will be damaged in a widely different way each time it happens because it's hard to say exactly what sort of damage will occur and what sort of further damage will ensue depending on the initial FOD.

The other thing is that it's probably very likely the radio transmission that was "pasted" over the video image probably occurred well after the images that were shown. Most guys (that are well trained at least) will not get on the radio and call for mommy until they get everything under control in the cockpit first. Two guys working with precision and coordination are required at the critical phases and that means the radio work gets put off until later - like the one guys said, "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" and in that order.

Looks like they did a good job! They made their pay for the year.

RE: Take off drama
 

Do not want to change the subject, but since the thread got pointed to that direction....was there ever a determination as to what caused the fire on the MD-11 Swissair? Was it the A/C? That was an absolute tragedy. I remeber when that happened and thinking about all those folks on a plane that was to heavy to land and on fire. What a nightmare.
Tommy

RE: Take off drama
 

I worked for Pratt & Whitney and have personally pressed the 'surge' button on one of their big engines hundreds of times while completing stall mapping and compressor stability testing during FAA certification flight tests. Mid-power surges (like derated TO's) are often not as seat-of-the-pants impressive as they are visually (spitting fire). Granted when I did these tests there was no associated imbalance but lots of fire (gotta figure out how to post video).

The fire that's visible is actually the genie being let out of the bottle: combustor flames escaping out the tail and, though you can't see it, out the inlet as well. These can be very exciting if you don't know they're coming but since it's not fire outside the gas-path, there would be no fire warning. In the cockpit it's an engine failure which manifests itself as EGT, vibes, rotor speeds (one or all) out of limits.

Engines in this state can make substantial amounts of thrust until they are throttled back and or shut down. Sometimes the engine will stabilize when brought back to idle and then be able to accel back to power. Other times due to extensive airfoil damage as is apparently the case here the aero is so screwed-up that it can no longer restabilize and will just continue to surge even at idle. Here there is a risk of fire due to the fuel being pumped in and poorly burned but usually not as it all gets blown-out the tailpipe by the slipstream.

External fire is most likely to occur in an uncontained failure but again, as fuel is shutoff, the slipstream will usually prevent sustained combustion. If a fuel line is cut by the uncontained material then there would be a fuel source but there's always a pylon fuel shutoff valve that closed as part of the nacelle-fire procedure (either manually as part of the sequence initiated by pulling the fire lever.

In the end, these events are must less exciting than they appear. I once flew as crew at Airbus on an old A300-600 where we pulled one engine to idle at TO (at 198,000kg TOW) and had to leave the gear, flaps, AND speedbrakes extended to maintain a reasonable deck angle and the required 156kt climb speed. The remaining engine still had us climbing at over 2000 ft/min before having a series of 14 high power (62,000 lb thrust) stalls before we backed-off the power and brought the other engine up off flight idle. Sounded like a 30mm cannon firing just outside the window. That flight was the most fun I've had yet with my clothes on. 8-)

Single-engine climb power on these birds is INCREDIBLE.

RE: Take off drama
 

Tommy,

Actually, there was a very good show on either Discovery or TLC about that fire and the amazing job the Canadian NTSB (whatever they call it) did to track down the ultimate cause. They basically made a wire mesh fuselage in an hanger and hung EVERY piece of debris they got on it in the right position and orientation. It was the most incredible jig-saw puzzel you have ever seen as most pieces were only several inches long and they had BOXES of them. They also heated metal of the same types and finishes in the plane to various temperatures and matched their color to that found on the debris to make a temperature map of the aircraft when it impacted the water.

They were able to pinpoint the origin of the fire as being in the overhead just aft of the cockpit. I believe that it was ultimately started by an electrical short that itself was a result of wire insulation that had gotten hard and basically cracked...

Bob

RE: Take off drama
 

Per, I absolutely agree and I did say that there probably was no fire indiication unless the engine case and kevlar wrap had been penetrated and hot gas was getting into the nacelle (for those unaware thats where the fire, overheat/ detectors are located). The guys did a first class job.

I have no idea just how much thrust the engine was producing (but I will try and find out, I know quite a few Britannia pilots) and I can quite imagine that severe variations of thrust WOULD be a handful, a sort of PIO in the yaw plane could result ) , something I have never had in the sim. I bet its introduced into many sim. programmes now ! I would personally prefer NO thrust to thrust which is oscillating wildly because even at max gross and derate 2 the 75 still has a very respectable climb on one engine. Some pilots may well disagree on that !

For those unfamiliar with the 757 I will point out that with its huge fin and powerful rudder, rudder angle would proabaly not be that great, even at V2 + a bit, its almost 20 years since I flew a 737 and 9 since the 75/76 and time dims the memory but on one engine the big twins were relatively pleasant to handle (particularly compared with something like a Canberra which was pain on one engine, in fact uncontollable below 140 knots) and probably easier than the 73.

Ah well, I only wanted to share the video.

Back to the Hawks !

Regards, David Gladwin.

RE: Take off drama
 

Another ten minute video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE

This shows it all, including the bird actually entering the engine just on rotate, plus extensive R/T.

The whole thing looks to have been handled in text book fashion (except by the bird) and Manchester ATC also were right on the ball.

Regards,

David Gladwin.

RE: Take off drama
 

Great link David, thanks for posting, these guys are absolute pro's, a real tribute to them and the fantastic machinery they use.

Rob.