Wow, that was an interesting audio track! It does sound like the F-16 was getting frisky and I'd love to know what resulted from the complaints of these two pilots.

It's the first time I've ever heard of it and I'm surprised the F-16 was so obvious about it. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that this happened in the pre-TCAS days. A fighter could approach from behind or below and the civilian would never even know he was there. But, as you can hear in this audio, one of the civilians actually got an RA (Resolution Advisory) from his TCAS and was directed to climb at 3,000 fpm to avoid the conflict. It also sounds like the F-16 pilot wanted the civilian to know he was there...maybe the fighter pilot felt that the civilian had wandered into restricted airspace and he wanted to drive the lesson home that he shouldn't be there.

From what the controller said, these two planes were not in restricted airspace, but were flying through a MOA (Military Operations Area). There's a big difference.

A Restricted Area is depicted on charts and has specific altitudes and times of operation associated with it. When the area is "hot", it is to be avoided (unless permission is granted from the controlling agency, also listed on the chart).

MOAs are depicted on charts but are informational only. Their depiction is just kind of a heads up to be vigilant for high speed military traffic in these areas. No special permission is needed to fly through a MOA.

No atomizer is needed. The slipstream takes care of that. We are told to dump from an altitude above 4000' agl because this ensures complete fuel evaporation. Some places (Zurich, for example), have specific areas set aside for fuel dumping if that becomes necessary. I imagine this is for environmental concerns, but I don't know for sure.

Fuel can only be dumped from the center fuel tanks and it is dumped at a rate of 2600 pounds per minute (about 390 gallons per minute). The center tank capacity is 12,000 gallons (80,400 pounds) and thus it would take nearly half an hour to completely dump the center tanks. Of course, it wouldn't be necessary to dump all of it...just enough to get down to a legal landing weight.

I have to agree with you that it doesn't seem ideal to dump over a source of drinking water, but with the atomization and large area over which the dumping occurs it must result in insignificant levels of contamination.

I've never had to dump fuel in my life. My father told me that this was routine in his Navy days when coming back to land on the ship. They took off with plenty of gas (cheap in those days) and then dumped down to landing weight when they returned to land.

I'm not sure how they would fly together to different destinations.

There's not much you can do to battle invalid risk assessment and risk control. I wonder if he lets his kids attend the same school? You never know when there might be another Columbine-type incident. Better to have only one kid massacred.

This article from ATW (Air Transport World) discusses Loss of Control training and the limitations of simulator training. I found it very interesting and if you do read it would like to know what you think. Would you consider going to Arizona for the training?

http://atwonline.com/operations-main...s-control-0401

These numbers kinda boggle my mind ... I think it's been covered here & there ITT, but:

How many gallons does it take to fly from NY to LA?
How much does a gallon of airplane gas cost?
How the F does an airline make money if a gallon of airplane gas is anywhere near $4/gallon? Their hedging group must be insanely important right now

In 2009, the average passenger miles per gallon for all commercial flights was 60.3.
Jet fuel is currently about $3.33/gallon.
So that's about 1$ for every 20 passenger miles.

As for the actual numbers, they would vary widely by aircraft type, load, and a bunch of other factors I won't attempt to guess.

I'm sure OP can give you some specific numbers from flights.

W0X0F, I wanted to let you know, your thread came in pretty handy last Thursday, 4/21/2011. I was on AA1962 MD80 PHX-DFW. We had an engine failure right at V2. I have to say, it was the most nervous I have ever been on a flight. I noticed right when the forward wheel lifted off, the left engine sounded like it powered down. We struggled to get in the air, stayed at about 2000' AGL, circled back and landed in the opposite direction that we took off from, all in about 10 minutes. Can you take me through what the pilots did as this occurred at what I suspect was the most critical part of the take off roll? The pilots did a great job and while we stayed unusually low, I didn't feel any unusual movements like I thought I would when losing an engine. After I realized the pilots where in control of the aircraft, my main concern turned to our landing weight, but I assumed you can't circle on one engine and it's better to get on the ground regardless of the weight of the aircraft? Thx!

http://www.azcentral.com/community/p...-0421abrk.html

I'm sure W0X0F will answer this but one thing I'd like to point out is that since the MD-80 has fuselage mounted engines, the asymetric thrust would be less than if you were flying in a type with wing mounted engines.

Oh, and typical of aviation (mis)reporting, doesn't an engine deliver power rather than receive it?

If you want to get super technical an engine does receive power. However, if you are not some MIT engineer an engine delivers power.

Actually, it receives energy and converts it to a different form of energy (several forms actually).

An engine converts the energy to mechanical energy, unless you are talking about jets/rockets. However, it does receive several forms of energy.

And noise... and heat, to name a couple.

Eh, I am talking about intended energy not by products (by-products?), but you are right... :P

Aah! If only everything could be 100% efficient and entropy didn't exist.

I am sure then houses next to airports would go from under 200K to the normal 500k+. California btw...

You're ahead of me on this one, N121PP — I've never experienced a real engine failure at liftoff. (BTW, this is at, or just after, V1, not V2. V1 is the speed at which we are committed to flying; V2 is the initial climb speed we use right after takeoff. We normally hold this speed, or close to it, until 1000' agl.)

When we have an engine failure before liftoff (but at or after V1), we slow the rotation rate on purpose to gain some speed and also to establish proper rudder input to counteract the asymmetric thrust. If it was hot and the airplane was heavy, the initial climb would be lethargic and might be only 200-400 hundred feet per minute rather than the usual initial climb rate of >2000 fpm. Once they start climbing, the non-flying pilot will call "Positive rate" and the flying pilot will call "Gear up."

After establishing directional control and rotating for takeoff, little is done before 400' agl. The flying pilot has all of his attention on maintaining a positive rate of climb and not straying from runway heading (or whatever heading is dictated by the particular departure procedure). He will accelerate to V2 and hold that until 1000'. The non-flying pilot will announce the problem, e.g. "Looks like we've lost the left engine." During this initial climb, the flying pilot might ask the other guy to give him some rudder trim in order to relieve the amount of force he has to maintain during the climb. About 15 units of trim into the good engine is needed to trim out the rudder pressure during the climb (we rarely use more than one unit of rudder trim during normal two-engine operations).

At around 400' agl, the flying pilot will call for the engine fire or failure checklist and ask the non-flying pilot to declare an emergency. The non-flying pilot will perform certain actions from memory and then consult the QRH (Quick Reference Handbook) for additional steps. Any action that requires a movement of a control for the failed engine will first be confirmed by the flying pilot before the action is completed. For example, one step would be "Thrust Lever for affected engine - ****** to idle." It would be really be bad to pull back the wrong thrust lever, so as the non-flying pilot reads this step and puts his hand on the thrust lever, the flying pilot will glance down and say "Confirmed" before the non-flying guy actually moves it.

At 1000' agl, the pilot will lower the nose slightly in order to accelerate so they can get some flaps up. He might also ask the non-flying guy to take out some of the rudder trim (as the airspeed increases, the rudder becomes more effective and less is needed to maintain directional control).

At this point, the decision would be made about whether they can return to land at the airport they took off from. If the weather was too low for landing, they might have to proceed to another airport. In that case, they would bring the flaps all the way up and accelerate to 250 kts and, of course, continue the climb. For an immediate return, they would probably only accelerate to 180-200 kts and leave some flaps hanging (5° in the 767; I think it was 8° in the MD-88).

Now they've got some things to do before landing: talk to the flight attendants, the passengers, the company and ATC.

For the flight attendants: for any emergency, we give them the type of emergency, how much time is remaining before landing (i.e. how much time they have to prep the cabin), whether or not an evacuation will be required and any special considerations (e.g. if the left engine is on fire, we probably want to avoid using emergency exits on the left side of the plane).

For passengers, we of course want to tell them to "Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight." Ha ha...kidding. Everyone here knows I hate that phrase, right? No, we'll tell them what we can about the situation, being mindful that we don't want to cause panic. We'll stress that it's under control and to pay close attention to the directions of the flight attendants.

For the company, we will call and tell them we're returning to land and give them the nature of the emergency. In a pinch, we can just ask ATC to "notify company" and they'll do it for us.

For ATC, we just have to tell them what our intentions are. We will get very good service once an emergency is declared.

[BTW, in sim world we gloss over all this during emergency training by just saying "Two in, two out" meaning we've talked to FAs and Pax (two in) and company and ATC (two out).]

We also have to accomplish the "After takeoff checklist" and the "Descent/Arrival checklist". A single-engine landing will have some special considerations, notably reduced flap setting and higher approach and landing speed, and this will be specified in the QRH checklist we ran for the situation.

The last consideration is landing weight, but we'll land overweight in an emergency. The MD-88 has no fuel dump capability, so the only way to reduce landing weight is to tool around the sky at high power settings. For some types of emergencies, this might be acceptable but I don't think any of us want to spend any more time than we have to on one engine.

True about the fuselage mounted engines, but the asymmetric thrust is still an issue. It's not like they're centerline thrust.

And I agree with you on the reporting. The problem was with the power being produced or delivered by the engine. I'm kind of surprised this got by an editor.

Thank you very much! It sounds like this was a pretty serious situation. (It seemed that way to me anyway. I don't know if I feel better or worse now. I did go back and listen to the ATC tape of the incident and nothing stuck out that surprised me, but I didn't expect to hear anything anyway. Based on your response, I have a few comments/questions. The pilots never said anything until we were on the ground (which I was fine with BTW). The FA's never said anything. I did here one "ding" right after the engine failed, but never a PA announcement from anyone. There were variable winds at the time and it was 90 degrees with clear blue skies. The plane was totally full, so I assume we were close to max weight, although I don't know that. Someone speculated that there may have been a fuel line problem to engine. Do you have any thoughts on that? Since the engine didn't explode, so to speak, I wondered if there was any validity to that? Also do you go through any type of engine diagnostics before takeoff that may discover an engine problem before the takeoff roll? Also did ATC stop all take off and landings until we were back on the ground?

No word from the pilots or the flight attendants? I'm a little surprised by that, but I wasn't there. Maybe the pilots really had their hands full (I don't know what the specific issue is that they were dealing with) and didn't have time to talk to the FAs. If that's the case, the FAs may have been a little blind-sided by the RTB, which would explain the lack of any announcement from them.

The ding you heard was one of two things: either the pilots calling the FAs (but I wouldn't expect this until after they had the situation under control, not right after the engine failed) or, more likely, it was a chime that sounds in many planes when a generator goes off-line. (You'll hear this taxiing in to the gate quite often when the crew shuts down one engine. The generator falls off-line and there's a ding in the cabin. Passengers often mistake this for the seat belt sign and start getting up even though the plane hasn't reached the gate.)

There's a lot of possible reasons for an engine to fail. If it's not a catastrophic failure (i.e. the engine coming apart), fuel problems are probably the most common cause. This can be due to contaminated fuel or problems getting the fuel to the engines (broken lines, clogged lines, faulty pumps).

Not really. We watch the start process to ensure engine temperatures are within limits and we monitor oil temps and pressures continuously. During the takeoff roll the non-flying pilot watches all engine instruments as we accelerate and even makes a callout at 80 kts: "Thrust normal."

I'm not 100% sure of what their SOP is for a returning emergency aircraft. It wouldn't surprise me if they stop all traffic until the emergency aircraft is safely back on the ground, but it certainly seems that they could, for example, clear a plane for takeoff on 31R if the plane is returning to 31L.

Again, love this thread.

Question: Last year, first week in July to be specific, I was on HA455 from HNL to MNL which was supposed to be a 10ish hour flight. About 7 or so hours in we're told to prepare for landing and that we were stopping at GUM for a minute. I was in business class and didn't see anyone deplane but it was a bit disconcerting.

I did some research and it seems as though the winds in that route during that time of year predominantly run east to west so I'm wondering why a plane would most likely need to make an unannounced stop like that. As it was we were three hours late and my driver, bless his heart, had hung around in the Manila rain. I felt ****ty that I couldn't text him to let him know while I was on the ground in Guam.

They never explained anything. Should I just assume the plane was super heavy (it was full, and baggage claim took about an hour for everything to get off... my bag was of course last.)

Hey WOXOF great thread! It really helped me to get on a plane for the first time recently, when i were a little nervous beforehand. I even checked on the flaps before take-off thanks to this thread lol.

I flew on a boeing 737-800 and something strange happend where im curious about.

A little after take off the lights in the cabin came back on and the small tv screens came out, but then after 20 sec or smth the plane made a turn and the lights went off again and the screens went back in the ceiling for a short time before they got on again.
Do you know why that could happen?

Also after a smooth flight and an smooth landing the passengers applauded,
do you have that happen? And if so what do you think about it

Thanks

I'm amazed that the crew didn't give any reason for something as significant as landing at an airport other than the original destination. It's just inconceivable to me.

If they knew before takeoff that an refueling stop would be required, I would expect them to tell you that. If it wasn't planned, it could be due to higher than forecast winds or some mechanical issue that required a stop. I get the impression from your post that it was a quick turn at GUM, so it was probably to take on more fuel. I still can't believe they didn't give some explanation.

The cabin lights and video screens usually run off of the Utility Buses (there's a Left and Right bus, dividing the load for non-essential items), which can be thought of as low priority circuits in the airplane's electrical system. If one of the plane's generators fails in flight, it's not uncommon for the Utility buses to be automatically shed to reduce the electrical load on the remaining generator.

Your plane might have had some electrical problems with the Utility buses or it could be that the flight attendants were aware of some issue with the video system and were restarting the entire system. I've had FAs call up to the cockpit on occasion to ask us if there's anything we can do to help them when the lights or entertainment systems aren't working properly. In this case, about the only things we can try are to turn the Utility buses on and back on (switches on our overhead panel) or pull and reset the circuit breakers for those buses.

Of course, there's the other possibility: gremlins.

That doesn't happen too often and it's a constant source of disappointment to me.

But seriously, when passengers pay compliments for a great flight or good landing, I usually tell them "Thanks. I never tire of hearing that."

Thanks again for hte response. BTW...we clapped as well and told the pilots they did a great job. Some other questions came to mind. Forgive me, this is like therapy for me. Since PHX is not a hub for AA and I assume they don't have any maintenance personal onsite, how does this plane get repaired and back into service? Do they fly someone to PHX to repair it or would they fly it empty to the nearest maintenance base? Would that be allowed, if there are no passengers aboard? I guess since the graveyard is so close, they could just go ahead and send it there?

BTW...I was back on the horse this week. Somehow the other nuisances of flying didn't bother me as much!

I didn't reaize Microsoft supplied IFE systems.

A PPL I usedto work with used to say that any landing you could walk away from was a good landing and any landing where you could reuse the aircraft was a great landing. Next time you grease it on to the runway and the pax are completely oblivious maybe you should point that out to them