Air France Airbus A380 loses engine over Atlantic - literally!

[JohnT]

looks like  the whole front of the engine came off.  Glad all on board are safely down so kudos to the crew.  That picture out of the window must have been hairy for the passengers

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41454712

[Head in the clouds.]

Yes John, as ever true professionalism and coolness of thought from the crew. 

It looks like a relatively clean break with no ensuing fire which if that was the case may have been a piece of good luck.

[stevehnz]

Glad it wasn't a flight I was on, for all that it ended OK. What engines do Air France have on their A380s? I'm wondering if it might be related to the engine failure on the Qantas one out of Singapore (?) a few years ago?

Steve.

[Rabbit Leader]

43 minutes ago, stevehnz said:

Glad it wasn't a flight I was on, for all that it ended OK. What engines do Air France have on their A380s? I'm wondering if it might be related to the engine failure on the Qantas one out of Singapore (?) a few years ago?

Steve.

Believe Air France use GE's - we've got the trusty Rollers on our Skypigs!!

 

Cheers.. Dave.

[noelh]

There'll be a huge flap to find that missing fan section and figure out why it separated. Otherwise all the GP7000 powered A380s could find themselves grounded. It could be a one off but if not.......

 The next time it happens they may not be so lucky.

[Seahawk]

Reminds me of the top aviation neddy, whose name eludes me, who, when asked why he always flew in 4-engined aircraft, said, "Because there are none with 5 engines."

[Rabbit Leader]

Captain to Passengers “Apologies ladies and gentlemen - we may be slightly delayed tonight. We seem to have lost an engine, so it may delay us a bit”. 

 

One hour later - “a-hem - slight hiccup, we’ve lost another engine so that will delay our arrival a little longer - sorry”. 

 

30 minutes later - “mmm.. seems like it’s not our night. We have now lost a third engine so may need to look for a slight diversion. You may need to cancel all your dinner engagements”. 

 

The First Officer then chips in - “Gee’s Skip - if we loose the 4th donk, we could be up here all night!! 

[Procopius]

I always liked Eric Moody's message to the passengers when BA Flight 9 ran into difficulties: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

[depressed lemur]

I does look a bit light up front on that engine! 

[wellsprop]

Does seem a little inconvenient that the fan fell off, I guess it had spent too much time looking at classic plane mags and decided it wanted to become a turbojet.

 

I suppose losing all that frontal area and excess weight can only increase performance though, surely that's how it works

 

On a serious note, hats off to the crew for landing that safely and fingers crossed it's a one-off.

[Britman]

I would say the chances of finding that front section must be zero. What is left might well have enough clues coupled with the engine record information?

[VMA131Marine]

Does not look to me like the fan failed. This looks like a nacelle failure as I can see fan blades in one of the pictures. The in-flight pressure inside the nacelle inlet is higher than outside due to ram air recovery. So, if the nacelle fails it will explode rather than implode. It looks like the fan nose cap is gone too. 

Typically, there are some rather breathless accounts of the incident in the media but most of the reporters writing this stuff are not fluent in the components and workings of a jet engine.

 

Update: after seeing more photos, it's clear that the entire fan assembly has come off. It's lucky that it did not run into any parts of the aircraft other than the nacelle.

Edited October 2, 2017 by VMA131Marine

[airbus320]

I used to take some satisfaction that our EAs were bulletproof compared to the Rollers, not any more I guess! I was thinking about this incident while looking at the engines during my walk-around last night, it's a fairly hefty piece of kit that departed the airframe and hence a good job that it failed over an uninhabited area. It's also unusual for such a failure to occur in the cruise, as the power increases during take off is a more common point. Perhaps they had just initiated a level change.

 

Chris

[grubber]

Rumour has it these GE/PW things have had hairline cracks in the LP shaft up front, so this one escaped the once over  maybe

[Meatbox8]

21 hours ago, Seahawk said:

Reminds me of the top aviation neddy, whose name eludes me, who, when asked why he always flew in 4-engined aircraft, said, "Because there are none with 5 engines."

Lord Brabazon, I believe.

[Meatbox8]

20 hours ago, Procopius said:

I always liked Eric Moody's message to the passengers when BA Flight 9 ran into difficulties: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

I wouldn't have been able to decide whether to applaud him or punch his lights out!

[Seahawk]

1 hour ago, Meatbox8 said:

Lord Brabazon, I believe.

If so, he was true to his principles: the Bristol Brabazon had eight engines.

[bentwaters81tfw]

2 hours ago, Meatbox8 said:

Lord Brabazon, I believe.

I thought it was the boss of Boeing.

[stever219]

10 hours ago, VMA131Marine said:

Does not look to me like the fan failed. This looks like a nacelle failure as I can see fan blades in one of the pictures. The in-flight pressure inside the nacelle inlet is higher than outside due to ram air recovery. So, if the nacelle fails it will explode rather than implode. It looks like the fan nose cap is gone too. 

Typically, there are some rather breathless accounts of the incident in the media but most of the reporters writing this stuff are not fluent in the components and workings of a jet engine.

 

Update: after seeing more photos, it's clear that the entire fan assembly has come off. It's lucky that it did not run into any parts of the aircraft other than the nacelle.

Look at the shape of the break on the shaft: it doesn't look like a clean break to me.  There also appear to be the remains of some fan-or stator-blades in the lower-left quadrant of the fan duct which suggests that the fan and its cowling twisted off, so I'm wondering just how close they came to an even more dramatic failure than the Qantas '380 suffered.  Definite "Good Show" for the crew though.