Southwest Flight 1380 from La Guardia to Dallas suffered engine failure about 30 minutes into flight today. Shrapnel from the engine blew out one window and injured several passengers. One of them is confirmed dead. The other injuries are apparently not life threatening. The flight was re-routed to Philadelphia, where it landed safely after a rapid descent and rough landing.
It sounds scary as hell for everyone concerned. The NTSB, reasonably, is saying it’s too soon to know why the engine failed.
That’s too bad for the deceased. Also, Southwest can no longer claim to have never lost a passenger. I’m just glad the plane landed safely and only a few people were injured. I’m sure that was terrifying.
I do wonder what went wrong there. The engine cowling is supposed to contain the engine in case it does decide to blow up, pretty much specifically to prevent this from happening. A lost engine is a big deal, sure, but it shouldn’t cause damage to the fuselage.
This is not the same engine used in the 737-700, but it is the same sort of thing that engine designs have to go through.
I wonder if this is going to lead to a grounding of all planes with this engine?
The cowling is designed to contain a turbine blade if it comes off of the hub (search YouTube for “A380 blade off test”), but it is not designed to contain a hub (“fan disk”) that cracks into two or more pieces, which is almost certainly what happened here. That’s the failure that happened on United 232.
I helped build that particular plane. Line number 601, built June of 2000. Boeing has built over 8000 737’s since I was hired in 1980. Wasn’t the first, won’t be the last.
The fatal casualty is reported to have been partially blown out the window and fellow passengers teamed to pull her back in. In the pics it seems the window taken out was over the trailing edge wingroot, like a hit from debris going up and over the wing in the slipstream.
She served the crew well as they did the job of getting on the ground ASAP.
It would be really, really hard for an adult human being to be sucked out of a window in the passenger area. I have no doubt the windstream was pulling her that way, but next time you’re in a 737 look at the size of the window in relation to the size of a human being.
Sounds like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got fatally hit by debris.
(There was a pilot who was sucked out of an airplane (saved by the flight crew grabbing his feet) but that was in the cockpit which has larger windows than the passenger section.)
There was much talk from the passengers about the rapid descent after the engine blew, but really, that’s standard operation - in the event you get a hole like that in the fuselage you really do want to get the airplane down to a lower altitude quick, even with oxygen being supplied to people. At 30,000 feet the air pressure is so low that even 100% oxygen is not going to be able to get into your bloodstream efficiently. It will help, it will certainly extend how long you’re conscious, but that altitude isn’t compatible with long-term human survival. Airplanes can descend in a controlled manner VERY quickly, much quicker than non-pilots realize. It might feel like falling, but it’s not.
A typical rate of descent can be 500 feet per minute. An emergency descent can be 6,000-8,000 feet per minute. That means the vertical component of speed is over 60 miles per hour, or over 100 kilometers per hour. More than 10 times faster than the normal descent. It’s still controlled, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You want to get people down to an altitude safe for unacclimatized humans as quickly and safely as you can.
And to think that Tammie Jo Schults wasn’t allowed to attend the aviation career day at her high school. And the Air Force wouldn’t let her test to become a pilot either…
Fortunately for everyone on that plane, the Navy let the lady have her wings.
Oh, well, I’m sure all the people who pulled Jennifer Riordan’s body back into airplane will be delighted to know they hallucinated the whole thing.
:rolleyes: Right. Because there is absolutely no other way a woman could be become a pilot other than via the military. :rolleyes:
Don’t get me wrong - I’m thrilled she could have a military career, but way to slap the face of every pilot who came up through civilian aviation. Had she not been in the military she still might have been just as good a pilot through her own drive and determination.
I didn’t say it was impossible, I said it was really hard (really, I did - go back and read what I posted). If it did happen that part of her body was out the window then I have no trouble taking the word of those actually present over my speculation.
Implying that if the Navy hadn’t that she wouldn’t have been a pilot, or as good a pilot. Which, as I said, is insulting to every pilot that came up through strictly civilian ranks and didn’t have a military career. Most airline pilots these days do NOT have a military background but that in no way makes them lesser pilots.
Maybe you didn’t intend it to come across like that but if that’s the case your statement was poorly worded.
I think the only point to be made was that she persevered through obstacles to have a successful career…I don’t think any other implication was intended.
I’m told that the military is hard up for pilots today; they offer huge bonuses in an attempt to retain trained pilots, but still fail.
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear it. Military aviation was really glamorous in the Cold War era; there were many different kinds of fighter and interceptor planes in addition to innumerable other aircraft, they all looked badass, and they were glorified not only through popular films up to and including Top Gun, but also indirectly through Star Wars and Star Trek, especially since military aviation was a potential path to NASA.
None of this really exists anymore (well, science fiction is still popular, but not quite the cultural phenomenon it was in the Cold War era) - the only plane you ever hear anyone talk about nowadays is the F-35, and it’s always in a negative context. Do kids make model airplanes anymore? I doubt it. Are people in their 20s today, familiar with Top Gun and Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat? Actually, on a related topic, flight simulator games used to be HUGE, with new ones coming out every year, in the 90s up to the mid 2000s. I’m not aware of this being the case now.
Anyway, it seems that there aren’t many people clamoring to be military aviators anymore, and so I think we can probably look “forward” to a future where airline pilots with military backgrounds are rare. I believe that the civilian pilots are trained just as well on the airliners as anyone else is, but there’s something cool about knowing that the person flying your plane is (or was) also capable of handling a much faster piece of machinery under more dangerous circumstances. It seems to add an extra layer of security. Could a civilian pilot do what Sully did? I honestly don’t know…did he (and others who examined the incident) credit his military training with giving him the skills to pull off that landing, or was it down to the airline training specifically?
This is the story of that incident. A great example of a crew working together to save the pilot’s life and the aircraft (and therefore the lives of the passengers and crew).
Nitpick: A normal descent rate is around 1500-2500 feet per minute depending on ground speed. Your point still stands though, an emergency descent is significantly steeper.
The pilot is in her late 50s. In her youth, women were largely barred from becoming professional pilots. The Navy was willing to not only let a girl fly their expensive airplanes but also to land them on boats. The passengers on that 737 benefited greatly from the Navy being not quite as sexist as other organizations back in the day.
And yeah, I’m pretty sure a Navy fighter pilot will be more skilled than the average Jane.
My comment had nothing to do with you and whatever local airfield helped you get your amateur pilot’s license.
