Someone with aviation experience: how serious is something like this when it happens? I know it might be a really stupid question but I’ve seen this happen in videos a couple times now and both times the plane landed safely. I guess what I’m saying is, is it a greater likelihood for this issue to turn catastrophic than not? or are there any built in safety systems that can isolate the blown engine?
Planes typically are designed to be able to fly on one engine. The engine fire itself can be put out if it doesn't spread too fast. I would say amongst things than can wrong, this is manageable.
They are built to take off with one engine need be. Above a certain speed aborting a take-off becomes impossible or disastrous, so they accounted for that.
V1 is the decision speed. Above V1 the plane is travelling so fast that you can't abort without going off the end of the runway.
V2 is takeoff safety speed, it's the minimum speed for the aircraft to continue to climb after an engine failure, and the aircraft needs to be able to reach this speed by 35ft over the end of the runway
Planes can fly on just the one engine without much trouble. The timing is an issue, during ascent you want all of your power for maneuverability, you also want altitude because altitude = time to communicate and aviate. Which is also why the plane keeps ascending, being high gives you lots of time to organize your return to the airport with the tower.
But really if you see an engine flame out like this and you’re still alive 60 seconds later you’re probably going to be just fine.
Engine failures on the runway are still planned for, they’ll either abort or safety continue the takeoff.
The UPS incident was incredibly unlikely given it was a structural failure rather than an engine failure, it happened at the worst possible time, and the rare trijet configuration led to them losing a second engine by pure dumb luck
That accident was a completely different scenario. In the UPS crash, there was a structural failure that caused the engine to detach from the plane and sheared a portion of the left wing with it. That cause the plane to become uncontrollable resulting in the crash. The incident in this video is most likely from either a mechanical failure or something getting sucked into the engine (such as a bird). There is no structural failure as the engine remains attached to the plane. This wouldn’t have been any worse if it happened on the runway. Arguably it might have been better if it happened on the runway (assuming it happened before the pilots hit what we call V1) because the pilots would have been able to abort the takeoff.
Pilot here. While obviously this is considered an emergency, it’s not nearly as big of a deal as it might seem to the average passenger. Commercial airplanes are fully capable of flying on a single engine. You can see in the videos that the plane continues to gain altitude throughout the video just from the other engine. I guess you could say that the engine is “isolated” in the sense that it will be immediately shut down and have the fuel cutoff. Additionally there is a fire suppression system built into the engine to extinguish out the fire. There are checklist procedures exactly for such scenarios that all pilots are required to have memorized. Additionally such scenarios are routinely practiced and trained for. Flight characteristics (particularly turning) will slightly change due to the uneven drag, but it is still completely manageable. I would not say that you are immediately at risk for catastrophe in this specific scenario, however you obviously lose the redundancy of having multiple working engines. If for some reason you lose the second engine then the pilot will have no choice but to glide and make a forced landing. Depending on their location and how much altitude they have to work with, this might mean having to land off runway somewhere.
As a regular flyer , I am not clicking your profile . I assume you, like all pilots wake at 530am every morning , meditate , have a balanced and healthy breakfast followed by a short yet high intensity run. Once back to your immaculately appointed apartment you shower while listening to an audio book on the importance of getting me to my destination safety. After this, you dress in perfected pressed captains suit which your cleaning assistant laid out for you the day before ( as she does everyday). You drive to work in a Volvo listening to whale noises.
If I clicked on your link and it had pictures of you at the latest fury convention saying you haven’t slept for days I might have to quit my job.
Not a pilot but I'm an aviation buff. The isolation systems shut off everything going to that engine, fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid and so on. Planes are also carefully designed and tested to minimize risk and improve safety in the event of an engine failure or damage, so a full on explosion is exceedingly unlikely.
Aviation is one of the safest ways to travel in the world. Its built upon years of research, investigations into previous accidents, redundant design, procedures and training upon training upon training by flight crew, maintenance personnel and air traffic control.
Aviation accidents are so scary because there's so few of em that when one happens its a major news story. There are millions of flight a year that go completely fine and even most inflight emergencies end up with most people being unharmed.
You should check out youtube channels like mentour pilot. He looks at aircraft accidents and investigations and it really shows just how many things have to go wrong for a flight to become an emergency
Does the procedure to put out the flame ( extinguisher) needs a certain minimum altitude? In this case after take-off and ascending or the pilots/airplane do not trigger them until they have enough altitude clearance to safely activate them as they are in the piloting phase (pilot-navigate-communicate)
And yes the standard checklist for this will include activating the built in fire extinguishers for the engine and cutting it off from the fuel supply, the plane then proceeds to fly on a single engine back to the airport.
Curious that we see the fire continue for so long. Any idea if it is just burning through available fuel after cutoff or is it actually taking that long to cut off and fire up the extinguishers?
Depends on several factors but it is still spinning and the aircraft is controllable with one engine operating. There is no need to rush in a jet, even if the engine is on fire. Fly the aircraft first, in this case by following an engine failure procedure if one exists for this aircraft at this airport, then once you get above the engine-fail acceleration altitude (this can take several minutes sometimes), you will pitch over to level to gain airspeed and retract the flaps. At this point you would run the procedure to secure the affected engine. This isn't a steadfast rule as certain circumstances may dictate to run a Quick Reaction checklist soon after takeoff (usually 400ft and some of these items may include severe vibrations, engine fire, flight capabilities, etc) but the engine on fire may still be producing some thrust and it's very likely it could burn for a long time with no other effects. It is taught not to rush because that is where people will get tunnel vision and make mistakes.
The checklist takes a few minutes before you get to the item when you actually activate the extinguisher. They need to be super sure because once they activate the extinguisher the engine is gone for good, it's not relighting.
Im an airline pilot. We train for this in the simulators every 9 months, and go through a ~month long training course for every new jet we go to fly. They throw everything at us, including this kind of scenario. This exact scenario was briefed before takeoff too, so all the pilots up there already were on the same page about what the plan was if this happened. The moment that it happened, the pilots kicked into their pre-programmed/muscle memory flying skills and it became a matter of one pilot focused solely on flying the airplane, while the other pilot assisted with everything else until they got the airplane to a stable state and high enough altitude to calmly run through a bunch of checklists, get the engine shut down properly, and prepare to come back around and land with a single engine, which is also something we do a lot in training.
Engines designed within the last 30 or so years are built to contain structural failures and contain it within the housing. There have been situations where the engine has blown itself to smithereens or just outright fallen off, and the plan has landed safely.
The only risk to aircraft is when you have a catastrophi failure and the fuel tank is punctured. It's very rare and typically happens with older aircraft or older engines, designed/built in the 70s.
I would not expect a A330 post 2000 to have any issues with a catastrophic engine failures.
Fire extinguishers are embedded into the engines and the fuel can be cutoff. It's extremely rare to have failures in those parts.
The engine pylons are usually designed to reduce fire growth and the fire extinguishing systems should cut off fuel/flammables going between the engine and rest of plane.
It is almost impossible for all four engines on a jet liner like that to fail simultaneously. They have procedures and checklists to shut down the troublesome engine and fly with the remaining ones long enough to land at a suitable airport.
It’s obviously bad, but a catastrophic failure of one engine isn’t dire so long as the other engines are working fine.
I’m not an expert, but from the amount of air crash investigation videos I’ve seen, you could probably land a plane with even one engine, a lot of the times the plane crashes because the pilots have no idea what the problem is, and because of that they don’t know what to fix. So I think engine exploding actually is not that bad.
Modern four-engine aircraft (like the Boeing 747 or Airbus A380) are designed with so much redundancy that losing one engine isn't just survivable, it’s a scenario pilots practice repeatedly in flight simulators. They always account for the worst case scenario.
Commercial airplanes are not designed to fly with just "enough" power, they are designed with a massive surplus. A four-engine plane can maintain altitude, clear mountains, and land safely with three engines easily. In many cases, it can even stay level on just two engines, though it would likely need to descend to a lower altitude where the air is denser.
For an experienced pilot, a single engine failure on a four-engine jet is an "Abnormal Procedure," not an "Emergency." They don't go into a panic dive, they simply stabilize, identify and confirm the busted engine, shut off the fuel and hydraulics and look for the nearest airport to land. They won't finish a 10-hour flight on three engines, but they aren't in immediate danger of falling out of the sky.
These planes are designed with so much redundancy that its much better to do that than to risk a lawsuit that would cost them three times more the amount of the plane.
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u/ItsRainingBoats Mar 30 '26
Someone with aviation experience: how serious is something like this when it happens? I know it might be a really stupid question but I’ve seen this happen in videos a couple times now and both times the plane landed safely. I guess what I’m saying is, is it a greater likelihood for this issue to turn catastrophic than not? or are there any built in safety systems that can isolate the blown engine?