AA Flt. 1134 (LAX/LHR) Loses Engine, Diverts to JFK
 

For those that are interested... one of the 777's is probably out of comission:

Jetliner Loses Engine, Lands Safely in NYC
Jul 26 8:08 AM US/Eastern
Associated Press
NEW YORK

A jetliner carrying more than 250 people lost power in one of its two engines Wednesday but landed safely at a nearby airport, officials said.

The Boeing 777 plane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport less than a half hour after the engine failed, said American Airlines spokesman Billy Sanez. Officials were investigating what caused the problem on Flight 134.

"The plane landed after the captain declared an emergency," Sanez said. "It's not a common incident, but the pilots are trained to deal with these situations."

The plane was en route to London from Los Angeles. Sanez said all the passengers would be put on another plane.

That's odd. JFK isn't all that close to the great circle route between LHR and LAX. Winds, maybe?

Nah, looks like they went out of the way. Probably had more to do with maintenance and/or alternate ways to get pax to LHR at Kennedy.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL134

I was just going to say the same thing. I wouldn't think winds would be such an issue this time of year. :confused:

Aren't they supposed to land at the closest airport? - it seems like a risk not to land at the closest airport even if it would be more expensive for AA.

Engine failure on 777 LAX-London today
 

I was just wondering if there was any perceptible feel for the passengers when a 777 is flying on one engine : does it still fly straight ?
can the unbalance of thrust be compensated fully , after all in high winds it's not uncommon to fly slightly off ....
Again just wondering if the perception by PAX would be noticeable / different than a highwind situation ...

Passengers would not notice a difference on flying on one engine. I was on a DL flight several about 8 years ago aboard an L10-11 in J. We had a favorable jet stream so the pilots shut down one engine and as we began our approach the fired it up again. We didn't notice a thing when he shut it down during flight.

I believe it's the pilot's call. The 777 is designed to fly for quite some distance on one engine. Note that if an engine failed in the middle of the Atlantic, it would have to fly at least 1500 miles on one engine, and if an engine failed in the middle of the Pacific, even further. Yet, we don't see frequent reports of these aircraft going into the drink.

If the pilot requests the nearest airport that can handle a 777 landing, he will get it.

Um....I would bet my whole year's salary that they did not shut down an engine due to a favorable jetstream

Closest suitable airport

The 777 is at LEAST certified to fly 180 minutes on one engine, but I'm pretty sure it's more than that.

According to flightaware, it doesn't look like it landed at the closest suitable airport -- and closest was my thought - just because they are allowed to fly 180 minutes on one engine doesn't mean they should if there is a closer suitable airport say 20 minutes flying. It does not look like JFK was the closest suitable airport.

Closest suitable could be one with:

Better emergency equipment
Maintanence base
Could be an AA/AE station
Longer Runways
Better Weather

Obviously the 3 experienced pilots and the dispatcher decided that JFK was the most suitable diversion airport. Everyone is safe, and most likely everything went very smoothly

AE - thx for the clarification - i assumed closest suitable meant w a runway long enough to accomodate

Keep in mind that this was not an emergency in the sense that the aircraft was in immediate peril. No fire. No smoke. The aircraft flies perfectly well on one engine. I have no doubt, as AEpilot76 has indicated, that the pilots in that plane were not playing with the safety of their passengers. And correct me if I'm wrong, AEpilot76, but it's not that uncommon for an aircraft to lose power in an engine. It happened to me once on takeoff on a BOS-LGA flight, and the pilot came on the air right away basically to say "no big whoop" but we'll be returning to BOS right away. We were chased down the runway by the emergency equipment, but other than that it certainly did seem like it was no big whoop.

BTW, I don't know if it was their intention to be hyperbolic, but the headline "Jetliner Loses Engine" (as opposed to the first sentence which reports that a jetliner lost power in one of its engines) makes it sound like an engine fell off the plane, which I have to imagine is a much bigger deal than just losing power.

I'd blame that one on the Associated Press, who came up with the headline "Jetliner Loses Engine, Lands Safely in NYC" in the first plane.

(FWIW, I thought the same thing as you when I first saw the headline.)

Mike