Comment by baggy_trough
19 hours ago
Yes, but when the engine came off, it also disrupted the third engine in the tail. Can't take off in this model with 2 out of 3 engines gone.
19 hours ago
Yes, but when the engine came off, it also disrupted the third engine in the tail. Can't take off in this model with 2 out of 3 engines gone.
Yeah, pilots I know saw puffs of flame coming out of the engine, and said that that's a tell-tale sign of a compressor stall. Which could have been caused by debris from the separating left engine striking the turbine.
Debris, or even just smoke from the wing fire.
It was specifically the distinct, rhythmic puffing. I'm not sure you could expect the same pattern from debris or a wing fire.
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Even if they had the thrust (doubtful) there wouldn't be enough lift with a gaping hole in the leading edge of one wing.
The video of the aircraft crossing the road wings level (well after #1 separated) and maintaining relatively controlled flight until too much energy bled off suggests to me the aircraft was likely to be controllable to a landing if sufficient thrust was available.
..for a moment. If there was sufficient hydraulics damage it might've stopped being controllable.
And even if they worked the fire might've damaged the plane enough.
For example https://www.faa.gov/lessons_learned/transport_airplane/accid...
when they lost tail engine, all of the hydraulics went down
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I thought the leading edge of the wing was intact in this case? I may be misremembering.
Yeah, if they had had more altitude, I would guess that this would have looked even more like the AA 191 crash from 1979, with the left wing stalling and causing a roll and pitch down.
That in turn reminds me of the DHL flight out of Baghdad in 2003 that was hit by a missile [0]. Absolutely amazing that they managed to keep it together and land with damage like that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...
An important factor in AA 191 is that the engine leaving did significant damage to the hydraulic lines in that wing - including those for the leading-edge slats. At the time the plane was not equipped with any mechanism to keep the slats extended, so after hydraulic pressure was lost airflow over the wings caused them to retract, which significantly lowered that wing's stall speed.
After AA 191 the DC-10 was equipped with a locking system: loss of pressure now results in the slats getting stuck in their current position. The MD-11 will undoubtedly also have this system, so a direct repeat of AA 191 is unlikely.
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