American Airlines Flight 383, a Boeing 767, during takeoff roll from ORD suffered an uncontained catastrophic failure of their starboard engine yesterday. Just like the sim. Except in the sim you don’t have 161 passengers, the wing doesn’t melt, and people don’t make meme’s from your super cool pilot picture:
Total power loss at 300 ft. Eighteen year-old solo pilot glides back safely by flying the plan he’d verbally self-briefed. Very short, very cool video: Plan your flight. Fly your plan. Control your airspeed.
Interesting article yesterday in the New York Times, titled ‘It’s no accident: Advocates want to speak of car ‘crashes’ instead’. It’s about safety advocates changing language use from a car accident to a car crash. The AP recently revised their style guide. Dr Rosekind of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is on board, saying, “When you use the word accident, it’s like, ‘God made it happen.’” The thinking is that ‘accident’ may make us shrug our shoulders and think, oh well, what can you do, accidents happen. ‘Accident’ may trivialize that most common cause of traffic incidents: human … Continue reading It’s no accident — it’s a crash
Some pilots will make an emergency out of a bad magneto check. Others, upon losing a wing, will ask for a lower altitude. In thrust we trust! And opposite aileron. Lots of opposite aileron. For more details on this and other damaged but flyable F-14s see this article on aviationist.com. And for the equally amazing F-15 see this very cool youtube video
You never know when it will happen. It could be your first solo. It could be after 42 years of flying. As Captain Gann titled a book: Fate is the Hunter. Best be ready. BA Captain Chris Henkey was. The press has praised his ‘split-second’ skills in aborting the takeoff on the runway. But I think the more praiseworthy airmanship is measured in long seconds not fractional millisomethings. All airline pilots practice rejecting takeoffs, and there is little decision making ‘process’ when an engine quits. Good stick and (lots of) rudder skills to decelerate straight ahead. But what was telling … Continue reading It’s Not About Split-Second Skills
