Qantas Engine Explodes Mid Air

[RobertVA]

Jet engines are much more reliable than the radial piston engines used in the past. The design of the planes make some allowances for the occasional failure. Features like pylons designed to break away if there's too much vibration and positioning the engine where it protrudes in front of the wing to reduce the chance a disintegrating compressor disk will puncture the fuel tank in the wing.

 

[Marc]

How much fuel gets dumped every year? I mean we get onto BP for an accidental leak in the ocean and how many gallons of Kerosene get dumped into the air?

The Kerosene is dumped around 10,000 feet and evaporates long before it reaches the ground.

Kerosene doesn't gunk things up the way the oil (especially crude oil).

The Gulf oil spill from BP spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil which equals roughly 180 million gallons or approximately 792 million litres. If that was kerosene it would be enough to full 3652 747-400s (maximum fuel load on a -400 is 216,840 litres).

Airliners only dump enough fuel to bring them down to maximum landing weight and even then some of them still land overweight requiring a special inspection. In the case of a fully fuelled 747-400 this would see the dumping 100,000kgs of fuel or 125,000 litres.

So far there have been approximately 32 fuel dumps from airliners this year (roughly 4 a month so call it 50 for a year) which so it would take roughly 83 years before the same amount of jet fuel is jettisoned as the Deep Ocean spill released in 3months.

 

[Lindley]

Want another statistic? The entire US General Aviation fleet burns the same amount of fuel in a year as the entire US automobile fleet burns in a day.

Now, I do expect commercial flights probably burn a bit more, since they tend to be longer range and heavier. But it still puts things in perspective.

 

[Marc]

Want another statistic? The entire US General Aviation fleet burns the same amount of fuel in a year as the entire US automobile fleet burns in a day.

Now, I do expect commercial flights probably burn a bit more, since they tend to be longer range and heavier. But it still puts things in perspective.

Okay a 747-400ER (extended range) carries 416 people in 3 classes. Fuel Load is 241,140 lites which works out at 576.6 litres per person. That amount of fuel gives the aircraft a range of 14,205kms.

So when you've got a fully loaded 747-400ER actually got a very very fuel efficient means of moving large numbers of people. Of course your efficiency will drop on smaller passenger numbers but go up on fully loaded 2 or single class configurations

A 777-200LR will carry 301 people in 3 class configuration and has a maximum fuel load of 181,283 litres for 602 litres per passenger but it will taken them 17,730 kilometres

A 737-800 will take 175 people in single class configuration. Fuel load is 26,020 litres for 148 litres per passenger at a maximum range of 6320kms

 

[Brent]

flying already scares me, this scares me even more!

 

[FordSVT]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/7954137/qantas-engine-explodes-mid-air

Geez these guys on this pplane were lucky to come out alive.
It was lucky they were lot to far away so they could land.
I have noticed that alot of our planes have been having problems lately.
A few years ago our planes were always fixed in Australia but now they are fixed in Singapore or some other country.

Anyway theses people came out of this okay but it would have been scary it makes you feel that maybe air travel is not a good option anymore.
I hope you will all have look at the article and clip

The engine did not explode.

and I wouldn't ready the article - ninemsn and good journalism don't go together and reporting on aviation matters just highlights their ignorance.

It suffered an uncontained failure which means that something left the engine at high speed (most likely a turbine blade) and wasn't contained within the nacelle.

They returned to San Fransico 80 mins later (20 minutes of that would of been flight time because they were 20mins out when the failure occurred) so 60mins was spent dumping fuel (and possibly waiting for a landing slot).

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4305467b&opt=0

#4 engine (RB211, outer right hand) suffered an uncontained failure ripping a large hole into the outer engine cowling approximately abeam the turbine rotors.

I just realized something you two have in common.

Neither of you like to use paragraphs.

 

[Marten]

Jet engines are much more reliable than the radial piston engines used in the past. The design of the planes make some allowances for the occasional failure. Features like pylons designed to break away if there's too much vibration and positioning the engine where it protrudes in front of the wing to reduce the chance a disintegrating compressor disk will puncture the fuel tank in the wing.

We need some kind of feature that hides all posts containing things that could go wrong on an airplane.

 

[Marc]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/7954137/qantas-engine-explodes-mid-air

Geez these guys on this pplane were lucky to come out alive.
It was lucky they were lot to far away so they could land.
I have noticed that alot of our planes have been having problems lately.
A few years ago our planes were always fixed in Australia but now they are fixed in Singapore or some other country.

Anyway theses people came out of this okay but it would have been scary it makes you feel that maybe air travel is not a good option anymore.
I hope you will all have look at the article and clip

The engine did not explode.

and I wouldn't ready the article - ninemsn and good journalism don't go together and reporting on aviation matters just highlights their ignorance.

It suffered an uncontained failure which means that something left the engine at high speed (most likely a turbine blade) and wasn't contained within the nacelle.

They returned to San Fransico 80 mins later (20 minutes of that would of been flight time because they were 20mins out when the failure occurred) so 60mins was spent dumping fuel (and possibly waiting for a landing slot).

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4305467b&opt=0

#4 engine (RB211, outer right hand) suffered an uncontained failure ripping a large hole into the outer engine cowling approximately abeam the turbine rotors.

I just realized something you two have in common.

Neither of you like to use paragraphs.

huh?

 

[FordSVT]

The way you write...

Nevermind.