Hypothetical: Commercial airliner runs out of fuel over the ocean..

Factual Questions
21

It depends on the type of aircraft. Three and four-engined aircraft start with a limit of 180 minutes from a suitable airport. No matter the aircraft or operator, they can operate up to three hours flying time from a suitable airport.

Twin-engined aircraft, however, are subject to “ETOPS” restrictions. ETOPS is, officially, Extended Range Operation With Two-Engine Airplanes (or Extended Twin-engine OPS). Right now the farthest an ETOPS-approved aircraft can be from a suitable airport is 207 minutes (no-wind). The worst-case scenario would be an aircraft losing an engine at the most critical time, and then flying on one engine for 207 minutes until landing.

Why can ETOPS aircraft operate farther from an airport than non-ETOPS aircraft? Because of the reliability/accountability required. It requires provable engine and airframe reliability from both the engine manufacturer, airplane manufacturer and the operator.

ETOPS began almost 20 years ago with the Boeing 767-200ER. In order to be approved to fly trans-Atlantic with only two engines Boeing (and Pratt & Whitney) had to prove that the engines and airplane systems were reliable enough to allow such a flight. Before ETOPS twin-engine aircraft were limited to flying no farther than 60 minutes from a suitable airport. As ETOPS was introduced the time between airports for twin-engine aircraft steadily expanded to 120 minutes, then 180 minutes, and now to 207 minutes. ETOPS up to 240 minutes can be approved on a case-by-case basis.

The focus by engine manufacturers and airlines on reliability has produced some amazing results. In order to be approved for 180-minute ETOPS an airline must demonstrate an engine failure rate of less than .02 shutdowns per 1000 hours of flight time. In other words, for every 100,000 hours flown the airline can have no more than TWO in-flight engine shutdowns.

The result is VERY reliable motors on the twin-engined airliners being produced today.

Interestingly, most of the longer ETOPS requests do not come from flying over oceans, but from flying over the poles. Oceans have islands with inhabitants and runways. The Arctic has a whole lot of nothing for hours at a time.

And BTW, the “Unofficial” meaning of ETOPS?

Engines Turn Or People Swim.

:wink:

22

There was a “newspaper” story and photo a few years back about a B24 bomber that was spotted on the moon. That would have been a candidate except it was not commercial. As an aside the article speculated that the pilot might have been Elvis.

23

I’m curious, when and where did you see this?
My husband is a firefighter at the Boeing plant in Renton, just south of Seattle.
The company requires a complement of firefighters to be with the aircraft during all flight testing. He’s worked there for many years. He followed the 777 from blueprint, to roll out. He doesn’t recall any crash testing in water or out, of any Boeing product ever. They stress test individual parts and systems. It just wouldn’t be cost effective to build one plane at several billion dollars, and then render it unusable. The tolerances on these planes are measured in millimeters, once its broken, they don’t tape it back up and wave b’bye.
Also, when he accompanies a flight test group, they leave the area. All flight testing is done in remote locations to protect life and property. Boeing owns a couple decomissioned Air Force Bases, including the air-space where they do their tricks. One is in Glascow MT another is in Amarillo Texas.
Is it possible you saw an actual emergency landing?
There was a restoration Dash 80 that splashed near Alki a couple years ago. It was on its way to the Smithsonian. They were able to recover it and its now on display.

24

This isn’t directly related to the original question, but since two pilots are aboard, I’ll ask here:

Would air crashes (in general, not water landings) be more survivable if all the seats were facing toward the rear of the plane? In other words, instead of being thrown forward in sudden deceleration passengers would be pushed back into their seats. Also, why don’t airliners use three-point seat belts, like every car has, instead of just lap belts, which can cause abdominal injuries much more easily?

25

That wasn’t the Dash 80, it was a 307 Stratoliner. I saw it a couple months ago and it’s magnificent.

The Smithsonian also has the 367-80. Both planes are on display at the new Udvar-Hazy center at Dulles Airport. (And parked almost next to each other, too.)

26

Short answer: yes.

Most airline injuries come from deceleration, and would be minimized by having the seats face aft.

In my previous life in the USAF I flew airplanes that could have “airline-style” seats installed via pallets. The seats all faced aft, for safety reasons. Of course, no one paid to get aboard my airplane, so they sat wherever the seats were.

The problem comes when you try to convince people to actually sit facing aft when they PAY to get on an airplane. The same is true for convincing people to wear a three-point harness.

It comes down to a risk-reward scenario.

How many people drive to the airport with no seatbelt on? Then again, if I told people that a full five-point harness with a HANS device would be a safer way to drive, how many would actually do it?

It’s the balance between what is safest and what people will actually put up with in the real world. For the forseeable future airline seats will face forward, and three-point harnesses will not be found.

27

Dammit!

The previous post was for testride’s question!

:cool:

28

Re: Gimli Glider incident and the Air Transat Fl 236 –

What’s the deal with Canadian airliners running out of gas mid-flight? Yes, I know those two were from different causes, but still…

29

Just to clarify, my comment about flying at 50’ and 140 knots while the passengers jumped out was, as Pilot141 alluded to, based on the premise that fuel exhaution was imminent and a ditching was guaranteed in a few minutes, not that you’d actually waited until the gas ran out. And again, it’s a totally stupid idea if survival is the goal.

Pilot141: It’s funny. I’d never considered the idea that during a ditching the F/As might suddenly have a riot on their hands as some folks decided their chances were better outside than inside. Boy that intercom call would sure screw up my concentration passing through 100’!

30

An acquaintance who is a pilot for a South Asian airline once mentioned that on a flight across the Indian Ocean, a faulty gauge led them to shut down one engine and fly the remainder of the trip - about 2.5 hours - on the remaining engine. (This was on an A320, I think.) He did not go into a lot of detail about the experience, but did say that things were pretty tense until they landed, and later roundly cursed the faulty gauge that made them shut down an engine for no real reason.

I gather there’s a checklist one goes through in case something goes wrong. What sorts of things can a pilot do to coax the last engine along until landing (preferably intact at the airport)?

31

Well, you don’t really “coax” the operating engine along (unless you consider chanting “Please don’t quit! Please don’t quit!” coaxing). You set power on the remaining engine, driftdown to your single-engine cruise altitude and fly “normally”. You declare an emergency (Mayday) and on arrival you get priority handling that minimizes the amount of turns, holding, etc that you might encounter coming in to a busy airport.

The biggest thing that probably came out of that incident was what caused them to shut down one engine. Faulty gauge or not, that still counts as an in-flight engine shutdown for the reliability record. I would expect the manufacturer and the airline to have the gauge problem fixed VERY rapidly.

32

One of the problems with rear-facing seats is that they’re more prone to inducing travel sickness. Hardened USAF guys no doubt never have such problems :wink:

33

Curiously the only time I flew in a C-141 the seats, installed in the cargo area as you describe, faced forward. It was 1986 flying from Diego Garcia to Clark AFB in the Philippines. I got to DG on a navy US-3 Viking, a gutted version of the antisubmarine plane Bush flew. That had fixed seats for five passengers, loadmaster (whose seat was on top of the hatch) and two flight crew. Six point harnesses.

I did sit facing aft in a C-2 Greyhound and that probably made an arrested landing more tolerable and would have made a more severe crash survivable.

34

Padeye, hmmmm. The only thing I can say is that the seats are on pallets, so the loadmaster could have them face forward or backward if he wanted to. I thought the regs said have them face aft, because that’s all I ever saw. I do admit to never actually reading the loadmaster regulations for loading seats though!

35

I flew on one smaller commercial jet (Dash 8?) that had the first row of seats facing backwards, all the rest faced forward. I was in the first row, it was an interesting but not totally unpleasant feeling. But you did get to watch everyone’s expressions on takeoff and landing.

36

In regard to the facing of the seats…

In most cases (unless something has changed in the last 3-5 years), the seats will breakaway well before a passenger is killed by the decelerative forces of impact. In short…passengers get squashed before they are killed in their belts.

37

I flew from Sacramento to Seattle on a 737 about 5 years ago, and the first row faced the rear of the plane.

38

**pilot141 ** and LSLGuy,

First of all, thanks for taking time to post, it’s cool to hear from you guys.

One of the questions that has intrigued me for the longest time is the degree of difficulty and probability of success of a water"landing". How hard is it to make sure your aircraft comes to rest right side up and more or less intact? It seems to me that the first wingtip to hit a swell would send you cartwheeling. (I don’t know what the engine nacelles would do…) How likely is the average ailine pilot to succeed given moderately decent conditions?

Do you practice this during your simulator time? When I was skydiving, they warned us about trying to eyeball your altitude to time your flare over water. Seems it’s pretty hard to tell if your 100 feet up looking at 10ft swells, or 10 feet up looking at 6 inch swells. One tip suggested trying to see your shadow (Hint: if your feet are damp, it’s too late :stuck_out_tongue: ) Are modern altimeters good enough for this? Would you have to aproach a water landing in a very different way? Slower airspeed, big flare & “stall-belly-flop” or just try to put her down veeery gradually?

Does the presence of waves affect your chosen landing direction or will you always try to land upwind?

Finally, in the book by the former head of the FAA (please forgive my poor name recall) she said that the portion of the cabin directly over the wing was structurally the strongest, and least likely to break up during an emergency landing. Do you agree?

I must admit that when I flew over the north Atlantic, and they did the floatation vest demo drill, that I did think that at best, it would help them find my body after I died of hypothermia 20 min after getting out of the plane… :rolleyes: I did not share that thought with my nervous-looking seatmate…

Also, assuming that a decent amount of the passengers make it on board the inflatable evac-slides-cum-life rafts. Do these have any supplies on board? Any radios to communicate with SAR aircraft, or do we have to use a lady’s compact mirror to flash morse code from the sun :smiley: ? I assume they have flares and water dye? An ELT would be nice too. Do they teach the crew how to deal with the wait and the sea conditions? Set up watches and hand-out decks of cards? Games of I-Spy & 20 questions?

Thanks for indulging my morbid curiosity and over-active imagination.

39

It depends on the airline and the aircraft, but there are some rear-facing seats. In my experience, they’re at the divider (I refuse to call that thing a bulkhead unless someone who knows can tell me I’m wrong) as the first coach row. I think that they’re really meant for families or small groups. These would be something along the lines of 737s, MD-80s (or whatever they’re calling them now), and the like. Decent-sized, decent-ranged, mostly domestic aircraft.

40

But long before any of that, they’ll suffer sever whiplash. Which is enough to paralyse.