5 ms·

Two different planes. Two different engines. Two different countries. Same day. The odds of this have to be as close to zero as anything I can think of.

by MR4D 6y ago

morpheos137 6y ago
Think witchcraft.
rhodozelia 6y ago
maybe related to a large number of planes sitting idle due to covid - come back in to service after sitting for 9 months and unexpected degradation has taken place
- kube-system 6y ago
  This is what I'd bet on. We have a ton of good information generated over many decades about the maintenance procedures that must be followed for commercial aircraft that are in daily use. We really haven't had a time in history when this many planes were parked for a significant period of time.
roywiggins 6y ago
On first blush, isn't this an application of the Birthday Paradox? If stuff-falling-off-planes is a birthday event that happens at random, if it happens 23 times a year you'll get two happening on the same day every other year on average. Eg if you pick a year (say, the 365 days ending today), if there were 23 stuff-falling-off events you'd have a 50% chance of two havjng happened on the same day. If it happens 10 times a year, the chance they coincide is 12%, which means it will happen more than once every decade. It's only when you get down to 5 times a year that it gets really unlikely to overlap... That said, uncontained engine failures do seem to be rare enough that two of them specifically coinciding really is very unlikely but in the realm of "weird coincidence" unlikely and not "supernatural" unlikely.
- TylerE 6y ago
  I also would suspect this sort of minor incident is much more common than most people realize. When you have no passenger injuries these things don't usually make the news.
  - silvestrov 6y ago
    How many passengers are even aware of contained engine failures? There can be a lot more failures than people think. I'd guess most people are also bad at estimating how many car accidents there are in a year.
    - oivey 6y ago
      In the case of a contained engine failure, don’t planes immediately land at the closest safe location? Passengers would definitely know.
      - TylerE 6y ago
        Usually, but that can be very far way. Look up ETOPS.
      - crote 6y ago
        It depends. The Denver one [0] basically landed straight away at the same airport 40 minutes later. The Maastricht one [1] circled around for an hour, and landed on a completely different airport. The whole "immediate" and "closest" is relative. Strange as it may seem, an engine failure isn't that big of a deal: the aircraft is designed to fly for hours while missing an engine. However, the aircraft is now in a bit of an unknown state. The pilots need time to work through their checklists, determining what the exact impact is. The airplane might be leaking fuel; it might've lost a set of hydraulics; maybe it's on fire; maybe the engine can be restarted and everything is fine. Landing as soon as possible at the closest safe location might turn out to be hours later and hundreds of miles away, perhaps even at your destination airport! [0]: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL328/history/20210220/1925Z/KDEN/PHNL https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL328/history/202102... [1]: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/LGT5504/history/20210220/1525Z/EHBK/EBLG https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/LGT5504/history/20210...
almost_usual 6y ago
Poisson Distribution theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209286
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Two different planes. Two different engines. Two different countries. Same day. The odds of this have to be as close to zero as anything I can think of.

by MR4D 6y ago

Two different planes. Two different engines. Two different countries. Same day. The odds of this have to be as close to zero as anything I can think of.

morpheos137 6y ago

Think witchcraft.

rhodozelia 6y ago

maybe related to a large number of planes sitting idle due to covid - come back in to service after sitting for 9 months and unexpected degradation has taken place

kube-system 6y ago
This is what I'd bet on. We have a ton of good information generated over many decades about the maintenance procedures that must be followed for commercial aircraft that are in daily use. We really haven't had a time in history when this many planes were parked for a significant period of time.

roywiggins 6y ago

On first blush, isn't this an application of the Birthday Paradox? If stuff-falling-off-planes is a birthday event that happens at random, if it happens 23 times a year you'll get two happening on the same day every other year on average. Eg if you pick a year (say, the 365 days ending today), if there were 23 stuff-falling-off events you'd have a 50% chance of two havjng happened on the same day. If it happens 10 times a year, the chance they coincide is 12%, which means it will happen more than once every decade. It's only when you get down to 5 times a year that it gets really unlikely to overlap... That said, uncontained engine failures do seem to be rare enough that two of them specifically coinciding really is very unlikely but in the realm of "weird coincidence" unlikely and not "supernatural" unlikely.

TylerE 6y ago
I also would suspect this sort of minor incident is much more common than most people realize. When you have no passenger injuries these things don't usually make the news.
- silvestrov 6y ago
  How many passengers are even aware of contained engine failures? There can be a lot more failures than people think. I'd guess most people are also bad at estimating how many car accidents there are in a year.
  - oivey 6y ago
    In the case of a contained engine failure, don’t planes immediately land at the closest safe location? Passengers would definitely know.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      Usually, but that can be very far way. Look up ETOPS.
    - crote 6y ago
      It depends. The Denver one [0] basically landed straight away at the same airport 40 minutes later. The Maastricht one [1] circled around for an hour, and landed on a completely different airport. The whole "immediate" and "closest" is relative. Strange as it may seem, an engine failure isn't that big of a deal: the aircraft is designed to fly for hours while missing an engine. However, the aircraft is now in a bit of an unknown state. The pilots need time to work through their checklists, determining what the exact impact is. The airplane might be leaking fuel; it might've lost a set of hydraulics; maybe it's on fire; maybe the engine can be restarted and everything is fine. Landing as soon as possible at the closest safe location might turn out to be hours later and hundreds of miles away, perhaps even at your destination airport! [0]: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL328/history/20210220/1925Z/KDEN/PHNL https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL328/history/202102... [1]: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/LGT5504/history/20210220/1525Z/EHBK/EBLG https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/LGT5504/history/20210...

almost_usual 6y ago

Poisson Distribution theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209286

deleted 6y ago

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