Passengers reacted with horror after the engine of an Air France plane from Paris to the USA disintegrated in the sky, forcing the aircraft into an emergency landing..

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/passengers-terror-airbus-plane-engine-11265832

No big deal - the A380's got another 3 engines...  Bloody drones... 

 

Seriously... it was fortunate that the wing didn't get ripped apart. Aren't the nacelles supposed to be able to withstand catastrophic blade failure??

Good to see that this did not turn into a bigger accident.  The engine looked heavily damaged, the damage could have been a lot worse.  Sounds like the airline staff really handled it well and saved many lives in the process.  Wonder what could have caused that on such a young aircraft.

John

23 minutes ago, HighBypass said:

No big deal - the A380's got another 3 engines...  Bloody drones... 

 

Seriously... it was fortunate that the wing didn't get ripped apart. Aren't the nacelles supposed to be able to withstand catastrophic blade failure??

Yes, they are supposed to and usually do, but what they don't withstand is, after having contained the initial damage, the 450 mph airflow acting like a big set of pliers to lever the cowling off after it has been weakened from containing the blast. So it looks like it did its job okay.

Im just thinking Qantas 92 which had an uncontained engine malfunction as well and that destroyed all the hydraulics of the plane almost bringing her down. That was because of an engine manufacturer defect. I wonder what caused this one 

Hi Folks,

Ever see the documentary on the 777 - they were using air cannons to launch large turkeys through the spinning fan blades during testing - pretty impressive stuff...

Regards,

Scott

Jet to Control Room: Execute "Turkey-521.cmd"

John

Well, if the engine was “loose” no wonder it fell off 😄

 

 

 

That's what I call a successful failure. Good job Engine Alliance.

Cheers,

 

Yikes!!  That's enough to make ya get religion!!  Scary, scary stuff!

Greg

20 minutes ago, lownslo said:

Yikes!!  That's enough to make ya get religion!!  Scary, scary stuff!

Greg

Once I was in Bozeman Montana on a Delta flight.  As we were getting ready to depart we heard a loud bang on the left, they shuffled us off the jet to wait for another.  Delta was getting bad press at that time.  We calmly got off and waited for another aircraft, know one  was scared, we just followed the flight attendants instructions.  I admired how Delta handled the situation.

I was a road warrior back then, so I knew what to expect and was always prepared.  On another flight we went around and around to land at a fogged in Michigan Airport.  Low on fuel, we came in at just above the tree level.  When we landed one of the "deadheads" kissed the ground.  Only then I knew we were in danger.  My great escapes!

John

10 hours ago, scottb613 said:

Hi Folks,

Ever see the documentary on the 777 - they were using air cannons to launch large turkeys through the spinning fan blades during testing - pretty impressive stuff...

Regards,

Scott

If that was the same documentary that I watched some time ago - I seem to recall how much that wing was 'bent' when testing - the wingtip looked some 70 - 80 degrees from the horizontal. Impressive.

I wonder whether the A380 has Kevlon installed ? 

Looks like it may need it...there must be quite a few tons of fuel in that wing....

So that's two major engine failures in the A380 ?

I feel that this push towards more and more power, less weight etc, may be responsible for many of these failures.

Time will tell.

Regards

Bill

14 hours ago, warriorpilot said:

Im just thinking Qantas 92 which had an uncontained engine malfunction as well and that destroyed all the hydraulics of the plane almost bringing her down. That was because of an engine manufacturer defect. I wonder what caused this one 

QF32 had an oil leak...the oil caught fire and weakened the rotor causing it to fail.

This type of scenario is not new....American Airlines had a B767 in KLAX with a very similar accident....engine number 1 suffered a catastrophic uncontained failure just like QF32....but in the 767, parts of the turbine went through the fuselage and embedded themselves in engine 2....causing severe damage to control lines, hydraulics, and also a massive fire. It was very lucky the aircraft was on an engine check on the ground...there are some spectacular photos on the net.

This looks interesting...the shaft is sheared off, but not uniformly....I would hazard a guess that one side cracked and the rest went to the side due to centrifugal force....whatever it is, am very glad to see no damage to aircraft or occupants.

In other news, seagull sets new altitude record for a bird.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/a380-superjumbo-makes-emergency-landing-canada-air-france-223734309.html

I work mainly on GE90 engines but have some experience on these GP7 engines, looks like the Fan hub has sheared off taking with it all the fanblades and most of the fan case. Total speculation but could either be a fatigue crack but not so likely given the size and thickness of the fanhub itself, or possibly some sort of faliure in the bolts that fix the fan hub to the front bearing cone.