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Commecial Engine Out


aviator_edb

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Well, I guess it happens eventually. My wife and I were flying home from St Lucia in the British West Indies. We had to take an ATR-72 from St Lucia to San Juan to catch a jet to Boston.

 

Anyway, 15 minues after departure the pilot kills one of the engines and turns us around. I gotta tell you. Mentally I know the plane shoudl fly fully loaded one engine but when you are over the open ocean, looking out the window, seeing the ocean and seeing a windmilling, feathered prop it does cause things to pucker a little bit.

 

Obviously we landed back in St. Lucia without further incident.

 

Anyone else got any stories like this?

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Hmmm, another one of those easy going off-topic (non-canard) posts.

 

But, no, that never happened to me (or anything like it).

 

I did fly through a tremendous thunderstorm once with Jack Roush in his Cessna 421 (although he didn't have his pilots license yet, he was at the controls), and we hit wind shear so bad we all hit our heads on the ceiling.

Mike LaFLeur - Cozy MkIV #1155
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I took a puddle jumper from Denver to Durango a number of years back, one windy night. The turbulance was so bad that we turned around 3 times, only to turn back to the original heading, because the bumps were worse behind us. Climb, descend, nothing helped. The cabin crew never got out of the harnesses, and with my seat belt pulled as tight as I could make it (seat springs compressed fully), I still ended up bouncing high enough to smack my head on the console above (I'm 6'4). On the way out, the pilot termed the ride 'severe +1'.

 

I've never been in a commercial engine out situation. I don't think I want to be either.

This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

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Anyone else got any stories like this?

Sure, I've got two.

 

This was about 20 years ago. I was flying commercial from LaGuardia to London and right at the point of rotation one of the left engines exploded. (Where's the crash position avatar?) I was at the window on the right side so I couldn't see the engine. My first thought was a tire blowout, but that thought only lasted a second, beacause all the passengers on the left side could see the fire and were not happy. The pilot was screeching the plane to a halt and I was becoming increasingly concerned about the water ahead of us. Someone got on the PA and was clearly very shaken, they said the fire was out and we would have to stay on the runway while the brakes cooled. There was concern that the brakes had fused and we would not be able to taxi back. So three hours we taxied back to the terminal where we were shuffled from one plane directly to the other, because we were technically out of the country.

 

Next...

 

This one was almost 25 years ago. On a flight back from London, we landed in Gander Canada for fuel. No problems so far, but they could not get the plane to restart. We ended up staying in the airport for 13 hours, which at the time was nothing more than a gas station. A plane had to be brought in from Boston, and crew from elsewhere. They quickly ran out of coffee and only had the blankets and pillows from the aircraft.

 

You would think I would be leary of flying as a result of these, but I'm not.

 

BTW if anyone can find the NTSB reports for either of these, please let me know. I'd love to read them, I've never been able to find them.

 

Jack Fairchild

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Not an engine out, but on a flight between Beef Island BVI and San Juan PR Over the ocean in an Islander, me in the co-pilot seat, flight at about 3k, I noticed the distinctive smell of burning electrical wire. The young pilot turned off all of the radios, let them cool for a while and then turned on one nav and one com. The smell did not return. I thought it inappropriate to talk at that time, however when arriving at San Juan, and deplaning, I quietly said to the pilot--"nice handling of that radio fire." He winked

I Canardly contain myself!

Rich :D

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I did fly through a tremendous thunderstorm once with Jack Roush in his Cessna 421 (although he didn't have his pilots license yet, he was at the controls), and we hit wind shear so bad we all hit our heads on the ceiling.

I know it's off topic, but i wanna know how you got to fly with Jack.

 

I think I read somewhere the he had over a thousand hours dual in his 421 before he soloed. He didn't solo until he bough his first P-51. Then he had to go rent a C150 to get his PPL. Something like that anyways.

 

 

Oh ya, my story.

 

How about dumping 100,000 metric tones of JET-A from a 747. You can read it here:

http://www.cozy1200.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20061221033630960

Drew Chaplin (aka the Foam Whisperer)

---

www.Cozy1200.com - I'm a builder now! :cool:

---

Brace for impact...

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Back in my early days at Ford, I was writing engine control strategy for Formula One. This was for the Benneton car and we had Cosworth do the engine, a 1.5 liter twin turbo V-6. Anyhow, someone approached Roush and convinced him to use our modules in his cars. He had a Trans-Am, GTO and a GTP team. His drivers were Lynn St James, Tom Gloy, Wally Dallenbach, Jr., Scott Pruett, and Bruce Jenner. I'm sure I missed someone.

 

Mostly my support was at the office, but I did get out to a few races. One was at a track somewhere around Fayetteville, NC. I was told that Jack had bought a plane and we were going to fly it out to Fayetteville. I showed up at Ypsilanti (Willow Run) and saw that Jack had a 421. Jack also had a very nice looking pilot at the controls. Although he told me that he had no interest in getting his license, he took the right seat.

 

The weather was looking a little bad in the direction of takeoff. We had weather radar and a strike finder in the panel and we could see there was a storm right in front of us and off to one side. The pilot asked control at Metro Airport (Willow run is under Metro control) for a departure was would have us avoid the trouble, but they declined had gave us a course that went right through it instead. We declined and waited for the storm to pass instead.

 

After we did get off, the pilot gave the controls to Jack and as far as I know, he flew all the way to NC until we had to land. We flew in and around thunderstorms all the way there. That's when we hit that downdraft and we all hit our heads. The rain was something fierce and when we landed I saw that the leading edge of the wings had all the paint worn off. I didn't remember it being that way when we left. We parked the 421 next to a brand new King Air all decked out in Jaguar green and Jaguar decals.

 

Funny. I don't even remember the trip going back.

Mike LaFLeur - Cozy MkIV #1155
N68ML
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