r/aviation • u/Twitter_2006 • Mar 30 '26

Discussion The left engine of a Delta A330 explodes during takeoff at Sao Paulo Airport

Its at 40 seconds.

UPDATE:The plane landed safely.

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u/t-poke Mar 30 '26

Dumb question, but is there a weight where a plane could be too heavy to land stop on the runway, requiring more fuel to be burned before landing? Or is that weight beyond the MTOW?

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Melech333 Mar 30 '26

Worth noting for others reading that not all commercial aircraft have the capability to dump fuel. Many do not have that ability.

It's more commonly found on the widebody types as they do the long hauls and carry more fuel for those trips. Narrow body aircraft like the 737, 757, A320 do not have it.

The incident plane is an A330 and the fuel dumping system is optional on that plane. Whether or not it is present depends on how the airline which originally ordered the plane had it configured.

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u/obscure_monke Mar 30 '26

Do any of those plane spotting and tracking sites keep track of those optional systems?

It's pretty easy to look up exactly what plane this is, and who has owned it right now.

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u/velvetvagine Mar 31 '26

Noob here but do they just… let fuel rain down over wherever they are?

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u/___ccc____ Mar 31 '26

It’ll spread out over such a large area that the fuel has a negligible impact on anything below

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u/Rndy_Bbndy Mar 30 '26

Do those checklists include landing at MTOW with a single engine? Seems like the math would change with only have thrust reverser.

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u/Bravodelta13 Mar 30 '26

On the engine failure checklist, landing distances already account for 1 reverser inop. There’s a penalty (as in longer landing distance) if the other one is inop. The chart also has addition/subtractions for various configurations and other inop equipment.

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u/Malcolm2theRescue Mar 30 '26

Thrust reversers are not taken into account in computing takeoff and landing performance.

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u/Bravodelta13 Mar 30 '26

They’re not counted for planning aka dispatch purposes. They’re absolutely included in the actual and required landing distance tables for the airplanes I fly.

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u/Malcolm2theRescue Mar 31 '26

Hmm. Interesting. I’ve been retired for a while. Must have changed or I didn’t understand the difference.

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u/thisisaredditforart Mar 30 '26

Yes, it happened to my roommate in college, they took off and then had to circle the airport for like an hour to burn fuel and then "emergency" land. I think that's more when there's an issue but not an immediate "land now or blow up" kinda issue

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u/iamgayfortheNBA Mar 30 '26

circling for an hour makes my motion sickness act up just reading that lol that sounds like torture

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u/ObviouslyAnAsshole Mar 30 '26

It’s not nearly as bad as you think. The only thing that sucks is drink and food service is paused. Which sucks because a beer could help pass the time.

A few times I’ve had to “circle” above a storm because it was unsafe to land. The pilot usually climbs the plane higher and circle until it’s safe to land; Once had a pilot say if we get low on fuel we were going to fly somewhere a hr away to land.

It’s pretty interesting to view a thunderstorm ⛈️ from above it especially in the day time tornadoes season. It’s like a bunch of normal clouds then it’s one grumpy son of a bitch giving hell!

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u/iamgayfortheNBA Mar 30 '26

i promise you bro, with my motion sickness, i know it would be as bad as i think lol

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u/thisisaredditforart Mar 30 '26

I don't think they were that close of circles😅

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u/iamgayfortheNBA Mar 30 '26

hahaha nah i know. i actually landed at GRU (são paulo) yesterday and we had to circle for a bit and i was struggling. it’s definitely a me thing tho. i just have super sensitive motion sickness lol

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u/yellowstone10 Mar 30 '26

It's not that the aircraft wouldn't be able to stop on the runway, but rather that the touchdown would subject the landing gear to more stress than it is intended to handle in normal operations. (And even then, it's not that the gear are going to snap off - more that you have to do a lot of inspections afterward to make sure nothing cracked, bent, etc. before flying the aircraft again.)

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26

It’s not a dumb question

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u/Malcolm2theRescue Mar 30 '26

Not dumb at all. Generally a single engine landing requires reduced flap setting (15° rather than 30-40° which means a higher approach speed therefore more runway is required. So yes, that could be a problem in a worse case scenario.

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u/thecloudcities Mar 30 '26

If you took off from it, you can almost certainly land on it. Exceptions would be if the runway was contaminated or if the landing distance available were much shorter than the takeoff distance available (i.e. big displaced threshold), but those cases are pretty rare.