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Southwest flight makes emergency landing after engine fails

This concerns me far more than mechanical failure.

"Police and airline officials say two United Airlines pilots have been arrested for suspected intoxication before they were to fly 141 passengers from Scotland to the United States."
Two United pilots suspected of being drunk arrested in Scotland | Fox News

"Saturday's arrests come barely a month after two Canadian pilots of an Air Transat plane were arrested at Glasgow Airport and charged with trying to fly while intoxicated."
 
beefheart said:
Pistons waste fuel and have short range. I got to fly on an DC3 a few years back in Alaska, it was awesome.
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They're actually more efficient than jets for the low altitude, low speed, low power operations. Much cheaper and simpler to maintain, too. They just don't scale up as well as jets do.
 
Deuce said:
They're actually more efficient than jets for the low altitude, low speed, low power operations. Much cheaper and simpler to maintain, too. They just don't scale up as well as jets do.
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Wouldn't work for me on Friday, I was at 33,000 feet, the clouds were over 40,000. I'll take the A320 I was in..
 
Helix said:
i'm afraid of heights, and everything about the process is inconvenient and expensive. also, on one of my most recent flights, the plane actually still had an "extinguish your cigarette" light on it. how old was that mother****er? metal fatigue, anyone? FFS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflight_smoking

sixteen ****ing years at least. my Jeep was made in 1998, and i have concerns about making a long commute in it. and that's at ground level, not at THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND ****ING FEET. we're even on our second Clinton since that plane was built.
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We are still flying B52s and C-130s from the 50s.
 
beefheart said:
Wouldn't work for me on Friday, I was at 33,000 feet, the clouds were over 40,000. I'll take the A320 I was in..
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One nice bit about my job, I get to get up to that 40+ range which is above everything 99% of the time. (i fly a citation)

The other 1% being strong thunderstorms which rate a big NOPE
 
VanceMack said:
We are still flying B52s and C-130s from the 50s.
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Hell, we have fighter airframes from like the 70s and those things undergo stress I wouldn't subject my worst enemies to. Anyone who takes 8 g's on purpose has a screw loose.
 
Deuce said:
One nice bit about my job, I get to get up to that 40+ range which is above everything 99% of the time. (i fly a citation)

The other 1% being strong thunderstorms which rate a big NOPE
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Yeah, I flew SLC-PHX, and there was a ton of monsoon activity, we had to reroute to the west, nice views out the window though.
 
Deuce said:
Turboprop engines are goddamned bulletproof. Don't be afraid of "prop planes." Their engines are still turbine engines, they just spin a big propeller instead of the fan you see on the front of jets.

There are no airliners that operate actual piston engines. Those are relegated to much smaller, usually private/recreational aircraft.
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good to know. i assume that plane made it. after a lot of effort, i got my suitcase off of the plane and drove a rental car. hope that whoever they resold my seat to enjoyed the flight.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
They actually still make prop planes today. Beechcraft and Bombardier both build commercial turboprop airliners. The turboprops operate just like jets except the turbine spins a propeller and not a fan. Which airline was it? if it was a domestic or Canadian airline I can guarantee it was probably a Bombardier Q400 (also known as the De Haviliand Dash 8) these are safe, modern aircraft. They are popular on runs to more rural airports or to smaller destinations, because their narrow fueselage, and turboprops allow them to dash off of runways real fast, so they can take off from shorter airstrips then Boeing and Airbus jets.

The American commercial airline industry is the safest trasnportation system ever seen in the history of Earth. they are heavily regulated and operate efficiently. They are inspected AT LEAST quarterly by the the airlines, in many cases weekly, in addition the FAA conducts their own inspections every year to maintain their airworthiness certificate. Pilots undergo significant training, so do mechanics, find an airline mechanic and ask them how much education they needed to get their A&P certificate, it is intensive training. accidents in the air end companies, just ask TWA. They have no interest in putting you in an unsafe airplane. unlike other industries, your safety truly is your first priority. an inflight mishap is multitudes more expensive to the airline then keeping the equipment running.

Commercial equipment in general will last many times longer then your wrangler. the auto industry sells you your wrangler knowing that you will be another car in a few years, and that you will not need to use it beyond 200,000 miles. you probably paid, if you bought it new, 30K tops.

An airplane costs tens of millions of dollars, and airlines expect to use them for decades, they are engineered to do just that. and on top of that they are serviced by the most competent wrench turners to exist on this side of the galaxy many more times in a week then jeep will ever have the hood opened.
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it was a regional US Airways connection flight. i think that they got bought out by someone since then. i had to be at an orientation for work, which booked my flight. assholes double sold my seat, which i didn't even realize was a thing, and then tried to ship my luggage to the destination anyway after telling me that i had no seat. i will avoid flying unless i absolutely have to from now on, and everything will be carry on.
 
Helix said:
it was a regional US Airways connection flight. i think that they got bought out by someone since then. i had to be at an orientation for work, which booked my flight. assholes double sold my seat, which i didn't even realize was a thing, and then tried to ship my luggage to the destination anyway after telling me that i had no seat. i will avoid flying unless i absolutely have to from now on, and everything will be carry on.
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These are issues with airlines being ****ty, not planes being dangerous.
 
Deuce said:
They're actually more efficient than jets for the low altitude, low speed, low power operations. Much cheaper and simpler to maintain, too. They just don't scale up as well as jets do.
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This is true.

Turbines literally guzzle fuel. I did line work on corporates when I was in High school

Was amazed to find out how much fuel even a small Lear 23 took to get to from Houston to North Texas

Two tip tanks and a trunk tank
 
Deuce said:
These are issues with airlines being ****ty, not planes being dangerous.
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yeah, if they can't even figure out how to sell one seat to one person or at least return the luggage of someone who has had his seat resold without permission, then that makes me trust maintenance a lot less. if i'm going 35k feet in the sky with you, then i need to be extra ****ing sure, because no one should ever be that high up unless they work for NASA.

i have a problem with flying, as you might have gathered.
 
TheGoverness said:
Southwest flight emergency landing after engine fails - CNN.com



Thankfully, no one was killed or injured. But these kinds of stories make me paranoid about riding airplanes.
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When I was in the army, people who never wanted airborne would say why jump out of a perfectly good aircraft, I would say the army fixes it so it is safer to jump out of it. But aircraft are the safest forms of transportation, the only bad experience I had on an aircraft was a c-17 that was getting shot at by ak-47 fire, too far away to even dent the hull but enough to hear the pinging from,the bullets bouncing off. later that flight we heard a whistling sound and all the air force guys started sweating and shaking out of nowhere.

The jet made it back alright, but the fear in the flight crews eyes meant something bad likely happened and they narrowly avoided catastrophe.
 
Helix said:
yeah, if they can't even figure out how to sell one seat to one person or at least return the luggage of someone who has had his seat resold without permission, then that makes me trust maintenance a lot less. if i'm going 35k feet in the sky with you, then i need to be extra ****ing sure, because no one should ever be that high up unless they work for NASA.

i have a problem with flying, as you might have gathered.
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Naw, wouldn't have guessed :D

Just think of it this way: is there really a substantial difference between 1000 feet and 35,000 feet when it comes to heights? You're not changing your impact velocity. :)
 
Deuce said:
Naw, wouldn't have guessed :D

Just think of it this way: is there really a substantial difference between 1000 feet and 35,000 feet when it comes to heights? You're not changing your impact velocity. :)
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good point.

however, standing on a ladder and changing my garage flood lights is too high up for me. you can imagine what i'm like at 35k feet. used to love flying and seeing the clouds from above as a kid. not these days, though. as an adult, i've become B.A. Baracus with smaller biceps.
 
Helix said:
good point.

however, standing on a ladder and changing my garage flood lights is too high up for me. you can imagine what i'm like at 35k feet. used to love flying and seeing the clouds from above as a kid. not these days, though. as an adult, i've become B.A. Baracus with smaller biceps.
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Statistically speaking, your wife is more likely to kill you than my plane. But, I suppose, it's not like this was ever based in logic and statistics to begin with.

I've been flying since my 16th birthday, so I have trouble understanding people who don't share my love of the skies. The ground is a lot scarier, I tell ya! So much more stuff to run into. Scary people around, axe murderers and the like. Worse: monsters. Mostly found in the oceans, sharks and giant squids and whatnot. But there are land monsters too: polar bears are ice monsters like that thing in the second Star Wars movie. In the sky, though? No monsters. No sharks. No bears. No bees. No Republicans. Nothing. Just open skies and sunlight. So much sunlight, it's hard to describe to you groundbound folks. You know those rainy, dreary, drizzly times where you don't see the sun for a week?

I do.

I do. It's always sunny on top of the clouds.

 
BrewerBob said:
How perilous of a situation was this, actually? I mean, they had another fully functioning engine. I can understand the fear of it were a single engine plane that just lost its only engine but even then you can glide for miles until reaching an appropriate landing spot. But if you still have a functioning engine what kind of risk is there in not making it to the nearest suitable landing strip?

I'm not saying the passengers on the plane were wrong to be scared. Something exploding on a plane would scare me too.
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Bit late to this, but from my understanding not perilous at all. Losing an engine sounds worse then it actually with (iirc most turbojets can fly with just one). It's only when all engines go that it gets dicey, though gliding to a nearby should be doable as long as you aren't in the middle of the ocean or at a fairly low altitude.

But yeah, the only issue with one might be if they had to do a go around but I'm not sure on that (it's very possible even a go around could be done on one engine).
 
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