SW Airlines catastrophic in-flight engine failure

[William Parcher]

Jesus. Did they say if she'd been wearing her seat belt? I always pick the window seat. Well, until now anyway.

Stories say she was in the window seat but don't mention the belt. It seems like even if she had her lap belt fastened her head and arms could have been sucked out. They say part of her body hung outside the plane for a while.

 

[logger]

Terrible! If a child was sitting there, probably would have been completely sucked out.

 

[casebro]

Do bird strikes sometimes knock out passenger side windows?

No but they fersure lunch turbofans. Shrapnel which then can destroy airplanes.

 

[BowlOfRed]

It would also require that the crew did not notice the strike at the time.

Not necessarily. You don't land just because of a bird strike. If there's no indication of damage, you'd keep going.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Looks like a fan blade came loose, scored around the inside of the containment cowling, then cutting the front off like peeling an apple from the top down. It then jambed and shattered, sending parts into the remaining blades, causing the whole fan to shred explosively. That also blew open the rear engine covers. You can see the evidence in the pics taken out the aircraft windows.

At that height the aircraft speed would have been near cruise, about 500 knots, nearly 1000 kph, or about 800 feet per second. So any flung parts from an engine about 5 meters out on the wing would be quickly "left behind". In the fraction of a second it took for parts to travel sideways, the aircraft would have moved tens of feet forward. So they would be expected to hit the fuselage well back from the engine and probably at an acute angle. Which is what happened in this case with the broken window being well behind the engine.

 

[a_unique_person]

No. Only one blade missing.

 

[Norman Alexander]

No. Only one blade missing.

That's enough to still do what I described.

 

[erlando]

No one appears to be using the oxygen mask correctly...

Just goes to show that no one is listening to the safety briefing.

 

[a_unique_person]

That's enough to still do what I described.

I agree. They appear to carry a bit of energy.

 

[alfaniner]

For what it's worth this is the first fatality on a US Carrier in nearly a decade.

Well, I guess that blows The PDJT's safety record, doesn't it?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-p...ter-engine-explodes-killing-one-idUKKBN1HP19V

I had just assumed this was an uncontained engine failure but, to my surprise, this video, when it eventually loads, seems to show the engine's fan intact. The cowl seems to have exploded but further forward than the fan, so now I'm confused about what happened.

<edit> Ah, wait, one broken fan blade.

 

[Trebuchet]

Just a minor nitpick because the thread title has been bugging me: When I was in the industry the word "catastrophic" was generally reserved for loss of the aircraft. It's an uncontained engine failure.
There are many thousands of these and closely related engines out there. The results of the investigation will be very interesting.

 

[Checkmite]

Some ATC audio from the incident:



The PIC is Tammie Jo Shults, a former Navy FA-18 pilot.

 

[LTC8K6]

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-p...ter-engine-explodes-killing-one-idUKKBN1HP19V

I had just assumed this was an uncontained engine failure but, to my surprise, this video, when it eventually loads, seems to show the engine's fan intact. The cowl seems to have exploded but further forward than the fan, so now I'm confused about what happened.

<edit> Ah, wait, one broken fan blade.

Amazing that one broken off blade resulted in all that damage to the engine, fuselage, and wing.

 

[LTC8K6]

Stories say she was in the window seat but don't mention the belt. It seems like even if she had her lap belt fastened her head and arms could have been sucked out. They say part of her body hung outside the plane for a while.

She may have already been killed by the shrapnel to the head.

 

[LTC8K6]

The masks coming down before the window blew out could indicate another hull breach somewhere.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

The masks coming down before the window blew out could indicate another hull breach somewhere.

Normal air handling systems on planes often have power supplied by engines. If the normal air handling system shuts down above a certain altitude, the masks deploy.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

 

[William Parcher]

At that height the aircraft speed would have been near cruise, about 500 knots, nearly 1000 kph, or about 800 feet per second. So any flung parts from an engine about 5 meters out on the wing would be quickly "left behind". In the fraction of a second it took for parts to travel sideways, the aircraft would have moved tens of feet forward. So they would be expected to hit the fuselage well back from the engine and probably at an acute angle.

There's a fun physics puzzle for the forum.

When an engine explodes on a jet plane, do all of the shrapnel pieces go flying at speeds slower than the plane itself? Could any piece actually fly forwards and hit the cockpit area?

 

[William Parcher]

The masks coming down before the window blew out could indicate another hull breach somewhere.

I think I read a CNN article this morning saying that there was fuselage damage in addition
to the window blowout.

 

[LTC8K6]

Normal air handling systems on planes often have power supplied by engines. If the normal air handling system shuts down above a certain altitude, the masks deploy.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

I would think the whole air handling system would be fine on one engine, though.
The APU can also supply bleed air for pressurization, I believe.

Of course, the system itself could have been damaged by pieces of the engine.

Or, the pilot could simply have decided to deploy the masks from indications on her instruments.