If you happened to be on United's flight from Denver to Honolulu today, your trip started out with a bang...
https://heavy.com/news/broomfield-plane-explosion-photos-airplane-parts/
(For the link averse: Uncontained engine explosion dropped big parts to the ground, plane returned to Denver, no injuries)
The ground picture makes me think of Donnie Darko.
And here's a passenger's perspective--the video is quite impressive. That would have gotten my attention...
Oh, Wow!! That must have been terrifying. So glad that there was an experienced pilot to get everyone back on the ground safely!
I also thought what would have occurred if this happened over the ocean? I believe it's a 7.5 flight from Denver to Honolulu. Our aviation specialist from the Seattle area is John Nance. He was interviewed here this am. His response was that this was a "rare occurrence." That said, still disconcerting. Kudos to the pilots! Happy to hear their were no injuries.
Janis, your point is well-taken, and with long-range airliners going from 4 to 3 to 2 engines, losing one engine has become more critical. The aviation industry developed ETOPS to certify how far these twin engine aircraft should be allowed to fly over areas away from airports. Link below for more info...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
This might not be reassuring to everyone--and having an uncovered engine with visible fire out the right window will undoubtedly be stressful--but it does show that the industry has thought about this.
Thanks for the link. Subsequent to my posting, CNN reported that a Boeing 747 Cargo plane departing the Netherlands>New York experienced an engine fire shortly after taking off from Maastricht Airport. It also dropped debris. It injured two people in a Dutch town.
A local Denver TV station interviewed the man whose Broomfield house got the new yard ornament, and he said the engine cowling ring hit the roof of his truck parked in the driveway, but missed him and his wife by just 10 feet. He seemed remarkably calm - maybe he didn’t like the pickup truck that much. Another house got a hole in the roof, only about 3 feet from the chimney, but then only 6 feet from missing the roof entirely.
One woman at the nearby dog park described that the falling debris looked like confetti - only bigger.
My cousin, who lives in Broomfield, heard the loud bang from 1/2 mile away, She said her husband looked at her and said "what the heck was that?" They were shocked to find out what it was!
SUSAN, I’m sure they might occasionally hear a car or truck backfiring, but how often would you expect to hear a jet backfire? I hope everything’s well with them, and that this was a one-time event.
The 777 is rated to fly four hours on one engine. In NAmerica a plane is never more than four hours from an acceptable airport. Never good but there is a high degree of redundancy built into modern aircraft. But crews are well trained in this area primarily because of the DC-10 that lost it engine on take off at O'Hare and cartwheeled into the ground about 50 years ago.
I well remember the DC-10 crash in Chicago. That plane really did lose an engine - as in came entirely off. In the process of coming off, if took out all the hydraulic control lines in the wing so the plane was uncontrollable, causing it to crash. My mother, sister, and BIL had been on that very flight less than six months earlier. It was flight AA 191 to Los Angeles.
Also flight 232, another DC-10, had its tail engine come apart on the way to Chicago from Denver. It also lost all hydraulics, but the pilots were able to control it well enough using engine thrust to fly it to Sioux City, IA, where they crashed at the airport. More than half the passenger survived.
This time, the rest of the aircraft was undamaged, and it was able to fly fine on one engine. Although the press is making a big deal about it, the plane didn't set down on the nearest runway, or even the nearest runway at DIA. Runway 16R (north to south) was closer for them and is the longest commercial runway in the US, at 16,000 ft. They, and the ATC, chose rather to fly them around to the south of DIA, over downtown Denver, to come into DIA from the east, landing going west, on the same runway that was being used for all the other aircraft landings at the time. They wanted to get back to DIA because they knew they would need the engine replaced, and United has their maintenance facilities at DIA. And they flew farther than the closest runway in order to land into the wind. I don't think those in charge felt it was that much of an emergency.
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