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Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

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Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#111

Post by gvb »

rwmj wrote: post #91
conistonwater wrote: post #19

> The passengers report they are still on board of the aircraft about 2 hours after landing because the airport does not have stairs to accommodate the A380. Does anybody know how this works? Why not just use any old ladder?

At first I was surprised they didn't use the emergency slides, but I suppose once the aircraft is on the ground and there's no evidence of a fire or similar, it's safe so there's no immediate need to deplane the passengers.

The risk of minor injury (sprains, etc.) is pretty high for slides and there is some risk of serious injury (broken bones and worse). They are used when the alternative risk is death.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#112

Post by justinjlynn »

bdamm wrote: post #87
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that the Quantas failure, while horrible, resulted in zero fatalities.

Very remarkable indeed, considering the damage to the landing gear, flaps, fuel tanks, and engine controls. The airplane at the time it landed was way out into the experimental flying zone. When people talk of pilot-less airliners I have to think of incidents like this. Pilots do make mistakes and people die as a result, but when equipment fails and nobody dies because a pilot does what is needed to land safely despi…

> Sometimes people on board don't even know.

That's the ideal general case. You really don't want hundreds of panicked people trapped in a broken tin can thousands of feet above ground while you're trying to handle the situation.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#113

Post by cpncrunch »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #90

There were questions in the article and one close over here, but no answer AFAIK : how did the move people from one plane to another if they could not desimbark them in the first place? Is the a way to connect two A380s together? (wild guess)

The article was incorrect...it was just passenger speculation. Probably the airport just didn't have the facilities to accommodate that number of passengers.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#115

Post by perilunar »

KGIII wrote: post #80
candiodari wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about it is, that these sorts of things get designed because of evolution. Some engine fails in some way, and it gets redesigned. Planes fail, ditto. And after >100 years of that, we have pretty safe planes. What most amazes me is that despite the scientific knowledge we "have", we can't design a new engine from first principles directly. We do it through trial and error. Lots of hilarious/horrible error.

It is kind of nest how they have progressed, as well. It is sometimes little things that make a big difference. It iterative process, I suppose. Rolls Royce prides themselves on hiring interns. The little cone piece in front of the jet engine had issues with icing up. This had plagued jet engines for years. They tried all sorts of ways to fix it, including complex methods of supplying heat. One of their interns just…

>I'm sure it has a formal name

Spinner.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#116

Post by eesmith »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #104
eesmith wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But do all those correct statements mean that the A380 hydraulic control systems, and their backups, are "hopelessly intertwined" to an aircraft designer?

> Sure. But do all those correct statements mean that the A380 hydraulic control systems, and their backups, are "hopelessly intertwined" to an aircraft designer? I'd hope so, given that all the redundancy didn't prevent an engine control failure on the A380.

I don't see your point. Redundancy is meant to make things more survivable in case of failure. It is not meant to prevent failure. Everyone survived.

As for Qantas Flight 32, which I believe is the engine control failure you are referring to, my reading of http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/4173625/ao-2010-089_final.pdf says that only one hydraulic system, Green, was damaged. The redundancy worked.

> Damage to the wiring also resulted in the loss of monitoring capability of the Yellow hydraulic system engine-driven pumps on the No. 4 engine and the crew disconnected both pumps as per the ECAM procedure. The Yellow hydraulic system was powered by the No. 3 engine for the remainder of the flight. The Yellow hydraulic system maintained 5,000 psi for the remainder of the flight and subsequent examination found no fluid loss.

The inability to shut down engine #1 was due to "[d]amage to wiring looms located in the left wing and the fuselage belly fairing."

Again I ask why "hopelessly intertwined" is a meaningful description for the A380 hydraulic control systems.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#117

Post by SmellTheGlove »

CydeWeys wrote: post #51
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #30

It's amazing to me that modern aircraft engineering is so good that an engine can lose its fan blade entirely at 35000 feet and the plane can still continue on for 2 hours and safely land. An uncontained failure like this is the worst kind, and I know it could have gone worse, but it didn't and that amazes me. I wonder if the cowling contained the initial disintegration but was removed in the process. I'm not an engi…

The A380 has four engines in total, and can easily tolerate the loss of just one in normal flight. Adding more engines has been a basic way to increase reliability since the beginning of the field; it's not just modern aircraft engineering. There's no other part of the airplane behind the engines either, so nothing to be hit by debris. What amazes me more is that the newest twinjets are now considered reliable enough…

I wasn't really commenting on adding engines - I know that concept has been around a long time. This wasn't just an engine going down, this was catastrophic failure, and my amazement is in that no other part of the aircraft was affected outside of that one engine.

> There's no other part of the airplane behind the engines either, so nothing to be hit by debris.

No, but there's a wing and the fuselage nearby. Again, I'm not an engineer, but I'm assuming that in this type of failure, the part of the engine that's spinning might want to come laterally (is that the right word?), and that seems like it could be trouble. I'm amazed that it didn't.

> What amazes me more is that the newest twinjets are now considered reliable enough to fly six hours away from the nearest landing strip -- that's how far they can coast on the single remaining engine if necessary!

Totally amazing. I'm not sure, but is that only the A350XWB for now, or have others been certified past ETOPS-360? It's basically certified to the design limit of the aircraft, so I'm not sure what else has been designed for that. Even 5+ hours is nuts though.

Somewhat related, but check out the Chilean regs on flying from the mainland to IPC/PPT. As far as I know, they still have the one aircraft rule.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#118

Post by dominotw »

inamberclad wrote: post #53
CydeWeys wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A380 has four engines in total, and can easily tolerate the loss of just one in normal flight. Adding more engines has been a basic way to increase reliability since the beginning of the field; it's not just modern aircraft engineering. There's no other part of the airplane behind the engines either, so nothing to be hit by debris. What amazes me more is that the newest twinjets are now considered reliable enough…

It's not really coasting. A transport category aircraft is required to have enough power to continue climbing if it loses an engine, so it must also have enough power to maintain level flight indefinitely (barring fuel consumption, oil leaks, or mechanical damage from an engine failure)

>A transport category aircraft is required to have enough power to continue climbing

Can a plane takeoff with just one engine ?

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#119

Post by dominotw »

This reminds me of aloha 243

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

> As a result of the accident, the airplane was determined to be damaged beyond repair and was dismantled on-site

Amazing that one one person lost her life.

Re: Air France A380 over Greenland on Sep 30th: Fan and engine inlet separated

#120

Post by hlandau »

dominotw wrote: post #118
inamberclad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really coasting. A transport category aircraft is required to have enough power to continue climbing if it loses an engine, so it must also have enough power to maintain level flight indefinitely (barring fuel consumption, oil leaks, or mechanical damage from an engine failure)

>A transport category aircraft is required to have enough power to continue climbing Can a plane takeoff with just one engine ?

Yes. Twinjet airliners must be able to take off if one engine fails at or after V1.
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