Comment by jacquesm
5 hours ago
From a failure analysis perspective that is much less relevant though. The first failure was the rear engine mount if it had been a secondary failure it would have been deformed first and then broken, and it clearly is not. It just tore in half on one of the four connections and then the rest deformed slightly due to overstress.
It was however relevant to the survivability of the accident: if the left engine wouldn't have detached, or would have detached in a more "manageable" way, the other engine (probably the tail engine from how it looks) wouldn't have been affected too, and the pilots would have had a better chance to take off. Plus the whole "when an engine detaches, it shouldn't start a fire in the wing it was attached to" part of course...
Yes, agreed, the secondary safety wasn't there either. There was a Boeing accident near Amsterdam with the plane crashing into an inhabited area, it had dropped two engines but kept flying, at least for a while...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862
Pictures of that accident are not for the faint of heart so think twice before clicking.