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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

#141

Post by KGIII »

dba7dba wrote: post #95
KGIII wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they use really, really precise timing and explosives to knock one blade loose in order to do the containment tests. They want it to come loose at a specific point in the revolution. The documentary didn't say why they wanted it to be at such a specific place, only that they did. I've long since forgotten the margin of error, but it was very small. You probably noticed that the individual blade is painted a d…

> I probably do watch too many documentaries. You are not alone. I actually watch more and more documentaries than movies or TV series. Reality is even stranger than fiction often.

It has been great to see the proliferation of documentaries on the web. Streaming services have been a great thing for me.

I watch documentaries pretty much to the exclusion of all other genres, except American football. Even if I'm not actively paying attention, I'll frequently have a documentary playing in the background.

It's not a scholastic pursuit. It is purely entertainment. I watch them because I enjoy them. Learning is incidental and not the objective.

I like to queue up playlists of documentaries and let them play through. The 'net has been excellent at facilitating this.

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

#142

Post by anthonys »

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…

I am fairly sure this was a contained failure. The reports I saw (unofficial) said no blades detached or hit the aircraft.

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

#143

Post by FabHK »

WalterBright wrote: post #138
FabHK wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure there are many other things that'll kill me first (hello, lack of exercise), but I do wonder where a detached turbine blade might cut through the fuselage and any passengers contained therein, and thus try to avoid the rows parallel to the engine. However, I'm wondering - would the blade go straight lateral? Or, relieved from having to pull the whole damn plane forward, would it fly forward and hit th…

The blades will come out radially. If you're concerned about which seats are safer, the ones in steerage in the back are the safest. They tend to arrive last at the scene of the accident :-) Good shoes can save your life, because you can walk out over hot, burning wreckage. Wear cotton, not synthetic, clothes, and you'll have less severe burn injuries. And, of course, pay attention to where the exits are and the flig…

Oh, I never take off my shoes until a few thousand ft AGL - I figure at that point it doesn't matter much anymore :-)

> They really do know what they're talking about, and they're well trained.

I wonder, btw, whether people on Saudia 163 would have survived if they had stormed the emergency exits after landing against (presumably) the orders of the crew...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudia_Flight_163

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

userbinator wrote: post #131
waqf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem fair to use the rate of injury during an emergency evacuation as a measure of what could be achieved with the same slides under non-emergency conditions.

The height is the same, and that's where those injuries come from. Those slides aren't like playground slides at all --- they are very, very high, and especially so on an A380. Also, they need to be replaced if used, which costs extra time and money. Basically, they are more like an airbag on a car.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by grkvlt »

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)

They used stairs for a 747 and disembarked from the lower deck doors only. The main reason for keeping pax on the plane was that it is not a commercial airport, and cannot handle customs/immigration for an A380 sized (anything > 15 pax, actually) aircraft. Only when the two new planes were available did they moved pax to them.

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

#146

Post by lloeki »

grkvlt wrote: post #136
lloeki wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finesse gives you two things: Quite directly, from ground altitude, a range within which to look for a place to land. As you mentioned the impressive finesse of gliders gives you more room, but gliders won’t generally be flying as high as cruising powered planes. Combined with speed, a timeframe within which you have to observe, orient, decide and act. Here, both top speed and stall speed give you some hints, and wit…

Fineness, I assume? Although it'd be important to have finesse, too!

Nope, finesse[0] (Other uses) is a synonym for glide ratio. I’m just used to the former.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finesse_(disambiguation)

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

#147

Post by JshWright »

FabHK wrote: post #134
laythea wrote: post #109

I think I will wait until these A380's are "broken in" before getting on one if I have the choice.

A380: first flight 2005, about 215 built B787: first flight 2009, about 600 built A350: first flight 2013, about 100 built Off the three, I'd mostly avoid the 787. I still find the A380 the most comfortable, due to all the space. Lower cabin altitude in 787 and 350 is nice, but doesn't compensate for cramped conditions. I'm a bit concerned about bleed air. (The high pressure air to maintain cabin pressure comes from…

The 787 also has a saner UX for primary flight controls (linked yokes, rather than independent sidesticks).

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

#148

Post by rphlx »

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…

The real concern here is not loss of thrust, but rather, what other parts of the airframe are seriously damaged or destroyed by the debris. In the accident record I believe there is precedent for separated engine parts seriously damaging wing and tail surfaces, causing at least partial loss of control.

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

#149

Post by hexane360 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #44
hexane360 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*For what a failing fan disk could do to a DC-10 built in 1973. Since this accident, hydraulic fuses and backup electronic actuators have become standard.

Uncontained engine failures can still cause a significant amount of damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32

I can't help but see those two accidents as completely different. I wasn't suggesting that an uncontained engine explosion is no big deal, but that there is vastly less danger to critical flight controls and therefore vastly less danger to passengers.

Let's compare: Qantas 32 lost throttle on one engine, lost one engine completely (obviously), flaps, and ABS. United 232 lost its tail engine, elevator, rudder, aileron, flaps, and had no ABS to begin with.

Qantas 32 was able to maintain a holding pattern for an hour while diagnosing the aircraft, and was given enough time to calmly calculate a glide path and put the airplane down safely. United 232 landed at twice the safe speed, with 6x the safe sink rate, on its wing.

Qantas 32 had 0 fatalities or injuries, United 232 had 111 fatalities and 172 injuries.

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

#150

Post by woodandsteel »

KGIII wrote: post #141
dba7dba wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I probably do watch too many documentaries. You are not alone. I actually watch more and more documentaries than movies or TV series. Reality is even stranger than fiction often.

It has been great to see the proliferation of documentaries on the web. Streaming services have been a great thing for me. I watch documentaries pretty much to the exclusion of all other genres, except American football. Even if I'm not actively paying attention, I'll frequently have a documentary playing in the background. It's not a scholastic pursuit. It is purely entertainment. I watch them because I enjoy them.…

One reason I love documentaries is the people in them are often truly intelligent and knowledgeable, where as tv and the movies are full of people who are supposed to be that but don't talk and act like it. And even if the people in the documentaries are not particularly intelligent, at least they are real human beings confronting real situations, instead of phony imitations.
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