I live a few miles east of O’Hare. Just a few minutes ago I heard 4 or 5 odd booms. I look out of my apartment (facing south) and I saw a plane heading east with flames apparently from its near (left) engines! Nothing on the news yet. I have a Sony 2010 with air band scanner and I haven’t picked up anything unusual there either. Whatever happened, I hope the plane lands okay.
Could it have been military? That might explain the flames but not the booms.
This was definitely flames, not exhaust.
I called the local news radio hotline, and they said they’ve already received reports. Still nothing broadcast on the station or the Chicago cable news station.
When I saw the plane, it seemed to be cruising okay and in control, not headed for the ground.
Still, it’s the scariest thing I’ve seen since 9/11.
Could that have been the jet equivalent of backfiring?
Zilch on the news so far, so obviously there wasn’t a crash.
IANA jet pilot. However, I’ve seen footage of FOD being ingested and what happens (from the outside) when a turbine blade breaks. In both cases flames briefly came out the rear of the engine.
Finally on the news: it was a 767 out of O’Hare, headed for Brazil. Plane still has one good engine and is heading back to O’Hare.
Here’s the story. The time is definitely wrong because, as I said, I posted just minutes after seeing the plane.
There’s even amateur video, but it’s poor quality, apparently taken from a car, and all you see are the flames.
Yep. FOD.
I thought that “Ask the Pilot” had covered this in one of his Salon columns (I know I read it in his book). At any rate, he said there are instances in which flames do come out of a plane’s engine. While it can really freak passengers out, it’s normal. I guess if they thought that’s what this was, they wouldn’t have landed the plane again so quickly.
“Feathers Of Doom”?
Foreign Object Damage (or Debris).
When I was on the B-1 project someone had left a wrench on an intake. I didn’t get to see it go into the engine though.
I have had it with these motherfuckin’ flames on this motherfuckin plane.
About 10 years ago we had something similar with an A300 leaving SJU for MIA – snafu with some fuel line connectors had it returning to SJU with the port engine trailing a plume of flame. And the path/approach meant the whole thing had to happen over the middle of the SJ business district. It was some interesting video, but I’m sure the passengers did not appreciate the excitement…