American MD83 at Denver on Feb 17th 2015, engine shut down in flight | AeroInside So I was heading home yesterday from Denver with my pregnant wife to my left and my mom (her 3rd flight ever) to my right. We took off heading to Dallas for what appeared to be a nice clear flight just a few rows ahead of the right engine. Maybe 10 minutes into the climb right after we turned to head south there was a large boom as if we had hit a large rock in a car almost. I looked out the window but didn't see anything abnormal. The pilot seemed to give the plane some throttle and we immediately turned around to head back to Denver. Once we all realized we were not coming apart everyone seemed to relax. Needless to say my wife and mom were not taking it too well especially seeing the fire trucks waiting for us on the runway. Rumors from other passengers was that we hit a bird and after a little research I see they are common in Denver. Any of you guys ever have anything similar happen? My mom says she is done flying. I had another pilot in the airport come up and tell me with 20000 hrs he never had it happen to him. Definitely my lucky day even if it took a extra day to get home.
I went for an ATA interview back in 1999. On the way from LAX to the interview the L-1011 lost an engine and diverted. We switched planes and they lost my luggage. I showed up late to the interview wearing street clothes. Half the people thought I was a looser, the other half thought I was an idiot savant. At lunch during a 'meet and greet', I was able to inform everyone the reason I was wearing jeans and Converse All-stars, your plane had an engine failure and my interview suit was inside. I had an engine tank on arrival into KSNA. Just shut it down and continued. Hi vibes caused me to shut if off. Turned out internal corrosion from sitting in Brunei for a year or so.
Matt, crazy story. I was on standby for this flight on Tuesday...#6 on the standby list and they only took the first three or four people so I had to take my originally scheduled flight (AA#316) that departed about an hour later. My bag was on your flight though and it was not delivered until yesterday afternoon. I heard you guys didn't get to DFW until like 10-11pm....could have been worse! Glad it turned out to be relatively uneventful with the exception of the delay. Question- I know another LaMotte here in the DFW area...you related to Michael?
Matt, I have only shut down 2 engines in my life of flying for 34 years.The aircraft today are really reliable. We kill, what, 30-35,000 on the roads every year here in America. The most dangerous part of your wife and mom's journey was the drive to and from the airport! I always use this argument when people talk about how dangerous flying is. Bill
Regular readers of AVHerald can confirm that "engine shut down in flight" seems to be one of the most common head lines.
I know we tend to have more engine problems in Denver due to the higher elevation. I've seen the highest ITT temperatures out of there in the summer time. Two years ago on the take off roll I noticed the ITT's at 924*C (right at the redline). At 1000' when I pushed the climb mode button (FADAC), both ITT's went into the red momentarily before settling. Talk about pucker effect. When we landed at the destination we got an engine 1/2 exceed message. When I talked with maintenance, he said they were getting at least one of those a day out of Denver. I believe they've since updated the software so it doesn't do that anymore.
Funny I was just talking to my flight coordinator and always request not to fly MD planes. Glad to hear you got down safe. Only incident I had was this one, Incident: American Eagle E145 at Toronto on Oct 5th 2013, lavatory smoke indication
Small world! The rest of the day turned to hell after the whole engine ordeal. Once we landed I stood in line for 3 hrs waiting to talk to American Airlines to try to get home. Once I finally did they said that they had another plane coming in at 7:30 that night. It ended up getting in around 8:30 and had to unload it's passengers. We sat down to take off and the pilot comes on the radio apologizing because they didn't have anybody still there to fuel the plane! Finally got a crew out to gas us up and we landed in Dallas probably around 11:00. My next flight to Pensacola was scheduled to fly out at 7:30 the next morning and they had booked us a room in Dallas for the night. We get off the plane and were told we couldn't get our luggage because nobody was there to unload it. They instructed us to go outside to wait on the hotel shuttle. My pregnant wife, my mom and myself sat outside in the cold with the rest of our flight for 30 minutes wondering where the driver was. Finally I called and was told he was on the way but had another 20 minutes to get there. We didn't make it to the hotel until after 1 and had to be up at 4:30 to get back on the shuttle to be back at the airport on the time. Needless to say we were exhausted when we got home. My dad's name was Michael but he passed away last year and lived in Pensacola all his life. I don't think I have any relatives over in Texas but it's not a common name so it's possible.
I have hit dozens of birds flying low level, but never lost an engine. Took out slats, one spoiler, and wing leading edges, but never an engine, including the sea gull that hit the left spike and went down number 1. Spike apparently parsed the gull into small pieces.
I would often perform post-maintenance flights on customers' aircraft and one day, one of my maintenance crew chiefs asked if he could ride along in the right seat. It was a near new Beechcraft King Air and about 15 minutes into a normal flight, I noticed that the right engine had no oil pressure indication (but all other indications were fine), so I asked the crew chief to cycle the gauge's circuit breaker. Still no oil pressure. So as not to possibly destroy a nearly new half-million dollar engine out on the wing, I instinctively did a precautionary shut down. The airplane could have taken us half way across the country on the other engine, but we just needed to get back to the airport. I looked over at the crew chief, who was looking at a dead stopped propeller out his window, and with wide eyes he said "I don't like this.". The hardest part of one-engine-inoperative operations (in other than a jet) is taxiing the airplane with all the thrust on one side (generally, you just don't have enough steering control to overcome the asymmetrical thrust) so, for example, to make a 90 degree right turn, you have to instead make a 270 degree left turn which becomes quite comical.
So sorry to hear. The Michael I know is maybe in his late-40s here in DFW so clearly a different guy. Only person I've ever known with that last name though so figured you might be related. Anyway, I'm not sure if you noticed but there was a very moving ceremony on the tarmac involving your inbound flight. The gate got pretty quiet after people realized what was going on...very sad and sobering.
RE: Engine Out operations. I used to fly a four engine airplane that would take off, from a dead stop, climb, cruise to it's destination and make a normal arrival-all with one engine shut down and the prop in feather. There is a procedure in the book to do it and I have done it at least twice. There is also a procedure for a two engine take off-haven't done that one. Most four airplanes are designed to do this. To take off on three has to be a non rev ferry flight, but as a general rule if an engine fails in flight you can continue a revenue flight on three engines to your destination without running afoul of the regs. 747s, DC8s, and even 707s do quite well on three. Some piston twins will even get better fuel mileage for long range ferry flights with one engine shut down. You may also notice when you see footage of P3s doing search and rescue flights one prop will be in feather. It is SOP to fly the P3 with one engine shut down. It is a light aircraft with a huge amount of power on tap-a combination thats hard to beat.
I did see the ceremony. Very moving to see. The body was on our flight heading to Dallas. When we landed they had to unload him and move him to another flight. My prayers go out to him/her and the family.
I'm a bit leery about Airbus products, but I've flown plenty of MD-80s, MD-90s and 717s (MD-95s) over the years and have never had an issue. I took an MD-90 back from PBI last night and had another nice flight.
Not an MD, but these guys took birds down two of their 4 engines on a heavy weight departure from Rota and made it back safely. The accident investigation animation/cockput voice recorder hasn't been leaked to youtube, but the crew did a great job bringing it back. Winds wee calm, so they basically did an 80/260 and landed opposite direction. West Virginia Air Guard crew honored for saving plane after bird strike
Engine failed? That's nothing-- you could have been on this flight! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
That's a helluva hard landing. Let's throw more fuel on a fire that doesn't exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJhUJ_BYvGE
