I’ve had exactly that situation. We took a bird into an engine and had to fly an engineer up to check it out. The same would’ve happened with your aircraft that happened with ours.
The engineers would’ve have said “we can’t find anything wrong with it but do a full power check and don’t go if anything doesn’t look right.” So they’ll line up, set full take-off power, and check that the engine instruments are all normal. It takes a few seconds for everything to stabilise then, as you guessed, everything would’ve looked ok and they could go. The big difference in the performance you noticed was because most of the time full power is not used for take-off. Most of the time we would use the lowest power setting that will comfortably get us airborne. The difference in performance between using full power and reduced power can be significant.
The benefit of flying a four engined aeroplane is that we are actually allowed to commence a take-off with one engine failed (with certain caveats such as no passengers.)
Which airliners of today can at least stay airborne at say 5000’ on a standard day at full gross or weight as they could be, with only 2 of the 4 engines running? Does it matter in level flight if it is the 2 inboard or 2 outboard? I inboard & ! outboard, how much would that reduce the ability to stay in the air?
Nearly empty with no passengers?
Do, any of the 3 engine airliners, B-727, DC-10, L10-11 etc., have the ability to stay airborne at g/w or empty on just one engine under the same conditions as above?
Can’t Google that detailed of info as my Google-fu is weak and all the big iron drivers I knew are all dead now or retired & anti-computer. I knew only one who died with his boots on & it was big iron but not airlines.
There aren’t that many four engine airliners flying today. The B747, A340, A380, and BAe146 are all I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure someone can come up with others.
I don’t have any specifics for anything other than the BAe146 but I’d think that other four engine jets would be at least as good as the 146 as it is not exactly well endowed with power.
The worse case scenario for engines failed is two on the same side as that causes drag due to the thrust being offset from the aircraft centreline. Two inboard vs two outboard engines doesn’t make any difference for performance but would affect what services are available. On the 146 the inboard engines run the hydraulics and the outboard engines run the electrics. Back up electrics is provided by the APU on its own or the no. 3 engine via a hydraulic pump. Back up hydraulics is provided by the no. 1 engine via a hydraulic pump run off the AC electrical system.
The drift down altitude with the loss of two engines on the same side at max weight in a standard atmosphere is 11000’. That’s the altitude you’d expect to stabilise at following a failure in the cruise. In reality you’d be a couple ton lighter than max weight because you’d have taken off and climbed prior to the failure.
With no passengers and say 4000 kg of fuel, which is enough to fly for an hour and a half plus reserves, you could maintain 23800 feet.
In the case where we conduct a three engine ferry flight with the whole flight being done with one engine shut down, there would be no passengers and only just enough fuel to meet the requirements for the flight so the 23800’ figure would be close to the mark if we suffered a second failure. Our performance department would work out figures for take off assuming a second engine failure as you rotate on the runway. The maximum take off weight they provide would give you enough performance to clear any obstacles in the departure area. There are a lot of caveats though, the departure has to be visual for the first 1500 feet, must be done during the day, no passengers, no icing conditions, no holding fuel required at the destination and so on. There is also no guarantee if you decide to stop on the runway. If you have a failure prior to the rotate speed and decide to stop, you may not have enough runway to do it. It is different from normal take-off performance in that regard.
I would be surprised if the other four engined airliners I mentioned couldn’t do at least as well as we can.
I don’t know about three engine airliners. They’re losing two thirds of their thrust obviously which is far more significant on the face of it than a four engine jet losing two, however it depends on how much excess performance they have on three to begin with.
Four engine jets tend to be a lot closer to their engine out margins with all engines operating because they’re only required to demonstrate performance with one engine failed.
I wouldn’t bet any money on it even though I agree with you.
I don’t get how this happens. Yes it’s easy to visually pick the wrong runway when they’re close to each other and are similarly lined up. but your instruments should tell you you’re not on the correct glide slope. I would expect every modern commercial plane to have moving map GPS’s. And if they didn’t I’d expect pilots to carry their own as a cheater. I know pilots use to do this in the 90’s. They weren’t flying off them but they were damn handy to glance at to see the layout of the approach.
And in this case the pilots should perceive the size of the runway on short final and know they’re at the wrong airport unless visibility is seriously low. And if they repeat back a clearance for runway 14 and they see the number 12 as they clear the approach end then they’re about to touch down on the wrong one.
I think it’s basically a case of “People tend to see what they’re looking for.”
You’re busy, a bit distracted, visibility is maybe not the best. You’re looking ahead for your runway. There’s a runway, aligned about as you expected. Maybe you’re not familiar with the area and the existence of another airfield. Maybe you mostly approach the Branson runway from the other direction.
Sure, it’s not supposed to happen - but it doesn’t seem far fetched that it could.
Oh I totally get that they lined up for the wrong approach. Been there, done that on a hazy day flying purely VFR. Even then I realized I was approaching the wrong airport and gracefully broke off the approach. This was of course my first flight with passengers and the radio stopped transmitting after that. Not my best flight.
The PIC in this case made a series of mistakes and the most important one was not recognizing the length of the runway. Even to a novice it would have looked noticeably short and this occurred in broad daylight.
One point to mention, the media made a big deal about possibility of it running off the runway onto the highway. Looking at google that would have resulted in it nose diving into a ravine. Not that the passengers would have cared how they died.
