It`s one of those days...

Engine damage, parts on the ground, 2 injured. 

https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/longtail-aviation/boeing-747-loses-parts-after-take-off-from-maastricht-diverts-to-liege-two-people-injured/

https://twitter.com/breakingavnews?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1363175798438510603|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aviation24.be%2Fairlines%2Flongtail-aviation%2Fboeing-747-loses-parts-after-take-off-from-maastricht-diverts-to-liege-two-people-injured%2F

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by CYXR

 

Yikes 😱 

The website linked suggests that the damage could have been caused by ingesting something into the engine, possibly a bird. It’s possible but it looks more like metal fatigue in the blades to me or a combination of fatigue and a bird.

Bird strikes in the engine usually cause damage and bending in the fan blades, it doesn’t normally cause an uncontained Failure of fan blades like this, I’ve had a couple.

Some interesting things to note from the ATC audio there, the pilot is heard making reference to UN 3077 , this is the dangerous goods identification for the cargo he has on board. The emergency response crews will want to know the UN number, quantity and location of any dangerous goods on board. They then look up the dangerous goods UN number in their reference material and it tells them exactly what it is, it’s class ( it’s dangers), and how to deal with it, in case things turn bad.

In this case UN 3077 relates to environmentally hazardous substances and it’s class is 9 , which is a miscellaneous hazard. The classes are numbered 1 to 9 , 9 being the least dangerous and  class 1 (explosive) the most dangerous.

In a completely unrelated story, a civilian cargo 747 flying from Germany to the US a few years ago had problems over the U.K. and declared an emergency and diverted into Heathrow, a busy, major international airport. It wasn’t until they were on finals that they declared they were full of class 1 dangerous goods. As it “ allegedly” turned out the explosive cargo was in fact ammunition and weapons and it was being surreptitiously moved by some shady government agencies.

The other point of interest in the audio is the crew can be heard asking for a 40 track mile approach, this would indicate to me  that they either had or suspected there was potential for a loss of the number 1 hydraulic system, due to the severe engine damage .

With the loss of number 1 hydraulic system the nose and body gear would need to be lowered using the alternate (gravity) system , but more importantly the inboard trailing edge flaps would be on the secondary electrical extension, which takes around 4 minutes just to deploy to flaps 5. So the extra mileage is requested to allow time for the flaps to deploy. 40NM is a pretty standard distance to ask for in these circumstances.

The operator  is not well known , it’s a Bermuda based executive charter outfit that’s only recently moved into heavy lift freight operations with a couple of old 747-400 freighters. However it is crewed by ex British Airways and Virgin  pilots who moved across when the jumbo fleets were retired last year. And so it is staffed by very highly trained and highly experienced 747 pilots.

 

Edited February 21, 20215 yr by jon b

Tha

33 minutes ago, jon b said:

In a completely unrelated story, a civilian cargo 747 flying from Germany to the US a few years ago had problems over they U.K. and declared an emergency and diverted into Heathrow, a busy, major international airport. It wasn’t until they were on finals that they declared they were full of class 1 dangerous goods. As it “ allegedly” turned out the explosive cargo was in fact ammunition and weapons and it was being surreptitiously moved by some shady government agencies.

Reminds me of when I was unloading a SAS 737 at Manchester once. They have a sliding carpet in the rear hold, so they're pretty easy to unload. I jumped up into the rear hold and started slinging the first row of bags onto the belt loader to get them off, then flipped the unload switch and pressed the button on the cargo hold roof to move the sliding carpet toward me, bringing the next row of bags to the doorway, then I started unloading those. That's when I found two cans of radioactive goods stacked in the bags, with the bags being used to hold them in place. These things look very similar to a big metal tin of paint with a handle on top which is the same, but of course they are heavy with being lead lined and they have lots of signage on them telling you what they are.

It's not that unusual for stuff like that to be on passenger aeroplanes, but not all airlines agree to carry them - SAS is one which does. They were not on the cargo manifest we received (this is something which comes through from the airline over a computer network, or ACARS, to tell us how many bags are on the thing, any wheelchairs etc we'll need, livestock on board and so on, so we can set the equipment up on the stand ready for when the aeroplane arrives). Thus that radioactive cargo should have been listed in the cargo manifest for not only the reasons you mention, but also because you have to use a sealable hazardous goods trailer to transport them and take them to the customs shed in the cargo area, to have them inspected. That hazardous goods trailer has a tracking device on it too, so it triggers an alert when you take it into the cargo area, and illuminated signs on the roadway tell you to pull it into the inspection area, just in case you were unaware of the necessity to do that.

So because we didn't know they were arriving, we didn't have the necessary trailer ready for a start, which isn't a huge big deal although it is sometimes hard to know where someone has left it, but also there are rules about how those hazardous goods are carried, such as, since they are potentially able to emit radiation, they have to be a certain distance from the ceiling of the cargo hold since that is basically also the floor of the passenger cabin, and like almost all cargo, they also have to be strapped onto a pallet or spreader board to stop them from shifting position and to spread the weight of the load since the floors of most passenger aeroplane cargo holds can only take a certain amount of weight (usually somewhere around 28 kgs per square foot). None of that had been adhered to.

I should imagine if the passengers had known that their bags were being used to prop a couple of radioactive containers in place, they wouldn't have been best pleased, but more importantly, if that thing had had an emergency, any emergency crews would have been unaware of the presence of that stuff. Needless to say I had to report all that a fill out paperwork etc and presumably someone in Scandinavia got a bollocking for it.

This is one of the interesting things a lot of people are unaware of that people have to know when working in aviation; you have to do loads of recurring exams and stuff on what hazardous goods are and how they are labelled and what you can transport etc and keep up on any rule changes etc. You also have to know about what weights the floors of the aeroplanes will take and how you secure stuff properly and all that malarkey.

Edited February 21, 20215 yr by Chock

Yet another dangerous goods horror story ! I suspect the industry is secretly full of them.

Ironic that the metaphorical worst flying job from the film Top Gun, flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog 💩 out of Hong Kong is presently one of the most well paid and stable in the industry. 
 

The trouble is nowadays you’d be lucky to be carrying rubber dog 💩, it’s more likely to be highly volatile lithium batteries 

Am I correct in thinking that, about 60 years ago, radioactive materials used to be carried in a special compartment in the wings, i.e., as far as possible from the passengers?

1 hour ago, dmwalker said:

Am I correct in thinking that, about 60 years ago, radioactive materials used to be carried in a special compartment in the wings, i.e., as far as possible from the passengers?

Depleted uranium was used as counterwight in the tails of 747s produced between 1968 to 1981

I seem to remember seeing on TV, a DeHavilland Comet with a small amount of radioactive material being loaded into a compartment  about two thirds of the way out to the wingtip and it was described as a method of transportation.

However, I have been reading about memory being regenerative so, after 60 years, I could be completely wrong.