I don’t like falling back on the same people over and over again. In this case, I am pleading the timeliness exemption.
For those of you who may not have heard, there was an incident over the weekend involving a United 777 flying from Denver to Honolulu: one of the engines failed and the engine inlet separated from the aircraft. The aircraft was able to make an emergency return to Denver, and there were no injuries on board. Parts of the aircraft fell into a neighborhood in the flight path, and some of those parts went through the roof of a house, but there were no injuries on the ground.
So the question comes up: what do you do in these situations? What do you do if you’re flying a plane with 239 people on board, and the plane starts shedding chunks of itself on departure?
I’ve said this before, but one of the answers is: first, fly the plane. At least, for as long as you can: it doesn’t always end this way. (But we have learned a lot since 1979.)
“Captain Joe” put up a video explaining what happened (including what checklists the pilots would have used) from his perspective, based on what we know now.
Bonus #1: From the VASAviation channel, here’s the traffic between the United flight and Denver ATC.
This video states the plane made a full stop on the runway, where no problems were found, and then it was towed off to parking. However, the article I linked earlier says that the right engine was actually on fire when the plane landed: emergency services extinguished the fire and then it was towed off.
Which kind of made me wonder when I read it: why did they not evacuate the aircraft if the engine was on fire? My suspicion is that it was a trade-off. As I understand it, the expectation is that anytime they have to use those emergency slides, people are going to get hurt. They aren’t designed to be gentle, they’re designed to get you off the airplane fast, and there are usually bruises, sprains, or even broken bones associated with that. Emergency services may have felt the fire was small enough to be controlled, and decided the risk to passengers was manageable. It seems like that was the right choice in this case…
Bonus #2: sort of unrelated, but I wanted to put this here for reasons. “Reel Engineering” covers “No Highway In the Sky”.
We watched “No Highway” not too long ago (it is available in a reasonably priced bluray (affiliate link)) and I think it is a fine movie. The book, to my mind, is even better, and I would genuinely like to see more people seek out Nevil Shute’s work.
It seems like he’s mostly remembered for On the Beach, which, you know, is an okay novel and worth being remembered for. But he wrote a lot of other stuff as well: besides No Highway, I enthusiastically recommend Trustee from the Toolroom and Slide Rule, his autobiography of his experiences in the aviation industry.
There’s little I can add to what’s already been said from my own limited flying experience. But like any industry where everyone seems to be an expert, and worse so in after-article comments where the non-experts ask some ludicrous questions, there are debates over the choice of turn direction. I read not one but two articles from Plane and Pilot already, one praising UA-328 decision making, one seeking to lead the pack on finding a scapegoat.
As you reminded us, ‘fly the plane’ is the answer. Every pilot is taught to fly the plane, and if/when things go wrong, fly the plane, and once things settle down… fly the plane. Pretty much until you have no plane to fly anymore*, you fly the plane.
* If it’s 2003 and you’re USAF (now-retired Colonel) Captain Kim Campbell, even lacking all your hydraulics doesn’t stop you.
* if it’s 1988 and you’re the crew of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, even lacking a big chunk of your plane doesn’t stop you.
* if it’s 1962 and your B52 lacks a control surface, that doesn’t stop you.
Of course, despite these and other examples, not everyone is so fortunate to pull a successful outcome from these significant challenges.
*I’ll claim that most of the important steps leading to a safe flight take place on the ground.*
This is the recurrent testing, the emergency checklist practice, even us little guys getting together (now virtually) in rooms to discuss failures. All this builds into our heads the solutions we may need on a moment’s notice, while we have the time to think about the options. The crew of this flight, just as so many crews currently in the air and preparing to join them, are professionals who put the time in to make these instant transitions from routine procedures to emergency procedures. They’re also the ones IN the problem, and it is of limited use to contest their decisions from the comfort of the ground afterwards unless one does so as part of preparing for a future emergency.
By the way: some of the articles on UA-328 refer to the SWA1380 incident noted on this blog as ‘Bagatelle (#7)’.