WRCSolberg

And that was hotly debated between AA and Airbus. Airbus claimed improper use of the rudder caused the separation. AA claimed such use shouldn't have caused a failure.

In any case we won't be seeing any new Airbus orders from AA for a long time....

AEpilot76

I could write 2 pages or more on this topic but I'll keep it short. V1 is takeoff decision speed. The decision to abort the takeoff must be made BEFORE this speed. This is not the speed where you should be deciding to abort. Vr is the speed at which your rotate, V2 is takeoff safety speed. At V2 you should be able to climb out single engine and I believe clear at least a 35ft obstacle at the end of the runway (I'm a little rusty, but I have recurrent training coming up so I'll make sure to get all the correct info then )

A normal takeoff would be briefed something like "Anything before V1 we will abort, anything after we will handle it airborne and come back and land"

Sometimes we will brief a takeoff differently if we are whats called "runway limited". Basically our takeoff weight is limited by the length of the runway (obviously it's short). Our briefing for such short runways would be:

"anything before 80kts we will abort, and anything after 80kts we will abort only for engine fire or if we just think the aircraft will not fly"
In this scenario, V1 should allow us to stop with enough runway, however when the runway is this short, you don't want to take any chances

YVR Cockroach

See:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...30X02321&key=1

YVR Cockroach

Physical loss of an engine in flight doesn't necessarily doom the aircraft.

http://www.ntsb.gov/Recs/letters/1990/A90_115_116.pdf

Of course this is more true in a/c where the engines are mounted close to the fuselage (e.g., MD-95/717, MD90, MD80, DC9, 727, Trident, BA 1-11, VC-10 and various Tupolev models an Ilyushin.

spurg

This seems a bit unlikely.

But, OK, if they really did shut down an engine, it still may not be a similar in flight experience since the engines on the 777 are on the wings.

If I recall the 3 L1011 engines are all close together integrated into the tail empenage.

This would not cause a significant yawl.

PresRDC

No, the L-1011 engines were not all mounted on the tail. One on each wing and one in the tail.

Threy

The wording of such a report has be carried out with great care, especially if US citizens are part of the story and could sue a company for 457 billion in damages. This comment is not intended to hurt anyone invoved in the crash, but if you read the whole report and if you talk to the investigators involved, you got a clear picture that the FO performing the take off had a certain history of overusing the rudder ( without any reason to do so )

Airliners from all manufacturers are designed to withstand certain extreme parameters resulting from wake turbulence and missuse of the flying pilots, but at some point even high tech equipment fails.

Just to add another comment regarding the two engine ops on the Tristar because of favourable jet streams...there is a nice German word which should be also used more in English and it is Anglerlatein, describing fisherman exaggerating quite a bit when describing how big the fish were they caught.

Ironically previous posts already pointed out that it is not more fuel efficient at all to fly with two engines at higher power than with three at cruise power ( not to mention that you very likely have to reduce your cruising altitude which would lead to questions by ATC etc. ... )

One of the big problems in aviation history turned out to be the silence of people in the cockpit when their colleagues did not follow instructions.Instead of pointing out the mistakes and reporting them to the company, too often everybody involved simply shut up which resulted in tragedies months or years later, which was also the case the AA A 300 which crashed in Queens. If the FO would have been retrained, tragedy could have been prevented. It is certainly a highly sensible issue , but some airlines ( LH for example ) have nice ideas how to make reports easier for people involved under such circumstances...

EXPflyer1

Thanks a lot for the informative reply AEpilot76! ^

Vulcan

From the Pilots board:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...=236319&page=2
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Just the facts off the APA board:

They heard a "thump" at FL350 north of ALB at 0350, about half way from LAX to LHR. FA's heard and felt it too - but no secondary indication anything was wrong. No eicas or status messages, engines smooth. Still, they all thought since "something" went "thump" - they better figure out what before crossing the North Atlantic. So after looking at their indicators they called Alliance Tech and Dispatch. Eventually they talked to RR reps and agreed a divert was recommended. Going through parameters they saw high VIB levels on right eng. Slightly elevated oil press and EGT, but otherwise ok. VIB level on LH ENG N2 was normal, RH ENG showed a trend arrow pointing off the top of the scale and it was N3, not N2. Still, the engine was running smooth.

With uncertainty of the engine's integrity, they decided to divert to JFK and as they reduced power, they got compressor stalls. More, as they went to idle, then the engine settled down. They continued smooth and easy in a descent, declaring emergency. At 22,000 feet the engine failed with no ill-effect since they had already gone to idle and started APU. Dumped fuel to about 65K pounds and landed around 475K.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++

WRCSolberg

So for the critics out there, they didn't begin having real problems until descent when they began reducing power. Ergo, they didn't fly all the way from the deviation on one engine, they were on two engines until descent.

marlborobell

Eek. You're not certain of the engine's integrity and you go 300 miles beyond the nearest suitable airport (which, as the flight track at flightaware.com clearly shows, was almost certainly YUL)? I realize they wanted to get the passengers on to London conveniently, and that JFK was a good place to take them from that perspective, but I'd love to read the report they'll clearly be submitting (per AEpilot76's posting of the federal requirements) showing why going on to JFK was as safe as landing at YUL.

f9999

The engine was apparently running within specs until they actually started the approach. Diverting was out of an abundance of caution -- they didn't have to do anything until the engine failed. And even THEN they would have been fine even if they'd been out over the atlantic given ETOPS requirements. Funny how people suddenly want to be super over cautious, but still complain about delays, etc.

If I were on that flight i would be thrilled they'd gotten me to a major hub where I don't have to deal with customs and there are a ton of flights to get me on to LHR. Given that there was no safety issue at all with diverting. We're talking about a big passenger jet -- come on, 300 miles is nothing, it takes what, 100+ just to do a descent at the normal rate? And there are hundreds of airports in new england and upstate NY (and likely dozens with appropriate runways) if things had gone really wrong quickly.

FWAAA

No problem; the airplane was flying on two engines when the decision to divert was made. AA's pilots aren't under any legal obligation to immediately land a twin-engined airplane with two operating engines when they have doubts about one engine's integrity.

oklAAhoma

So a glance at flightaware.com enables you to better determine the closest suitable airport under such circumstances than the professionals who were actually flying the plane? That is a truly frightening concept.

Skyman65

I frequently get significant "yawl" with the Texas-based FAs.