Here’s a good video of the flight path and radio communications with the tower: https://youtu.be/G7-zh7Sebr8
It’s always amazing too me how calm everyone seems in emergency situations like that. It almost seems like a routine flight.
United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
331–340 of 483 posts
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I’m supposed to fly on a 777-200 to Denver operated by United in just a few days. Yay!
Look on the bright side - you're probably more likely to die from catching COVID-19 from another person on the flight.
Not sure which is the worse way to go. 3-8 mins of flaming, falling terror; or weeks of facing potential death in a hospital
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#333Maybe a system for emergency detaching of the failed engine with a parachute would help aleviate the consequences of flying with a uncontrollably vibrating fireball?
Oof. I would not want to be the bystander whose house an entire engine fell on, even with a parachute haha
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Random = clusters happen. In fact, mathematicians were hired during the Battle of England to estimate whether the Germans were aiming for specific buildings (“why is there a cluster of bombs around this church???” or around some secret offices) or just spreading randomly. Verdict: They weren’t aiming, it was random chance that bombs made some clusters onto some buildings. This is what random looks like: No even distr…
Where I have read this before, Gravity's Rainbow?
Grinstead & Snell in the part on Poisson distributions maybe?
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#335No doubt this was a happy ending, but modern airplanes like the 777 are perfectly capable of flying, even climbing with one engine. So, while it seems very heroic on the part of the pilot, it is pretty ordinary and non news. What I do think is a happy outcome is the debris from the disintegrating engine did not fall on someone and kill/injure them. Source: Pilot.
Flying on one engine is one thing. Flying one engine while the other is on fire due to unknown causes is another. Still newsworthy in my book. Source: also a pilot
Respectfully disagree. When you are flying with one turbofan, it does not matter why the other engine is on fire. The checklist says, shut off the fuel, if W&B allows, move fuel off the wing and drown the engine in CO2.
Source: Over 3500 hours turbine time.
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it was 'confined' if the containment ring did its job? If it had failed (like not supposed to) it would have been a whole lot worse.
The plane landed and didn’t blast enormous holes with ejected compressor blades. That’s a successful failure.
Is that what happenes when The fan blades fly off and hit the airplane?
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 777 has been flying for 25 years with almost no fatal accidents. Unless your flight will be flying over Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries or through a wormhole above Malaysia, you should be perfectly safe.
Another way of looking at it is that after flying and accumulating 25 years of wear and tear without major incident, we now have seen a repeatable flaw that these aircraft may encounter due to their age.
> these aircraft may encounter due to their age
Unlike some codebases, aircrafts actually have mandated maintenance. Which is why most accidents are due to human error and not massive technical failures.
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I’m supposed to fly on a 777-200 to Denver operated by United in just a few days. Yay!
The 777 has been flying for 25 years with almost no fatal accidents. Unless your flight will be flying over Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries or through a wormhole above Malaysia, you should be perfectly safe.
Or also if your pilots have just finished their type rating and used to fly A320s. Hopefully they remember that you actually need to manage your throttle on a Boeing!
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#339That quoted ground observer. Do they work for the NTSB or something? I am 110% certain that if I saw a plane on fire in the sky, I would not have the presence of mind to remember the term "cloud deck", let alone the rest of those details. Ground observer: "Good sir, I do say that the cloud deck was quite low so I didn't get a good look, but the engine was mildly louder than usual, and possibly had smoke, but perhaps…
>"AAAAAAAAAAAAA PLANE ON FIRE IN THE SKY, RUN!!!" I grew up about 5 miles from an airport and for many years I had a recurring dream that I was looking out the window at an airliner that looked odd somehow or other, until I realized with growing horror it was going to crash in the back yard. I never saw anything like it in real life, nor was it ever a concern for me whether I was in a flight path when deciding where…
The first Final Destination movie starts with a ground observer scene of about that distance of a plane crashing right after takeoff.
I don't know whether your age fits, but maybe you saw this and recalled it in your sleep every so often.
Re: United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: the response header [1] of that website suggests it is powered by Apache and Perl. Which is amazing in itself. And it's still responsive despite being #1 on HN. [1] Apache/2.2.17 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/1.0.2r mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.0
Why is that suprising? Serving static content is easy
I mean. How much is classic Perl used in web applications these days?