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Qantas ferried an engine on the wing of a 747 (2016)
- Animats 4y agoNo big deal. External payloads seem strange, but 747s have carried much larger ones, such as the Space Shuttle. Worse things have been carried under wings.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...
- leeoniya 4y ago> Worse things have been carried under wings.[1] this one [1] was way scarier, imo D: [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
- dotancohen 4y agoThough interesting, this is completely OT to this discussion.
- Stratoscope 4y agoI suppose you could say the same thing about cm2187's comment from a few minutes ago about the history of terrorism. Personally, one thing I enjoy about HN is the tangents that discussions sometimes take. If there is something I can learn from a comment, I'm not too worried about whether it is strictly on topic.
- dotancohen 4y agoA tangent to the topic, sure, I love it. But hijacking the discussion to draw attention to something that has absolutely nothing to do with either the topic or relevant to a specific comment it almost the definition of a troll. Despite a glancing similarity to a detail not relevant to the topic, GP was not relevant to the comment he replied to.
- sokoloff 4y agoIf that’s your threshold, I suspect you find a lot of real-life trolls in everyday small talk. “anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” applies strongly to leeoniya’s comment IMO.
- nixass 4y ago
- js2 4y agoThere's still a bomb deep in the muck somewhere off of Georgia (US) too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...
- can16358p 4y ago> W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a... Imagine mistakenly loading a nuclear warhead on the wrong plane.
- dlsa 4y agoImagine the other team unloading what they were expecting to be a warhead.
- can16358p 4y agoOr the other team that was not expecting nuclear warheads, but, say, donuts. "Sir, I need you for a moment. It's kinda important"...
- sitkack 4y agoSo now we consider Human Factors when designing weapons designed to kill millions. They need to be operated by the forgetful, the stressed, the young the drunk or anyone not experiencing their full faculties. Lets internalize this.
- raverbashing 4y agoYes but the Shuttle Transporter has several modifications and reinforcements, so it's not really a "stock" 747 Flying it is also more complicated
- dotancohen 4y agoUpmost importance was to attach the orbiter black side down: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vaPH0.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/vaPH0.jpg
- dylan604 4y ago>Flying it is also more complicated This was something that always made me think about the difficulties of flying something with multiple sources of lift.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoThe 747 had to be adapted/modified to carry the shuttle, but the fifth pod to carry a spare engine was built in on some 747 models.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoNormally not with passengers on board...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- olliej 4y agoIsn't that an intended standard design use of a 747?
- roelschroeven 4y agoYes, absolutely. I don't see why this is noteworthy, the 747 was specifically designed to be able to do this.
- spockz 4y agoWell not all of us are familiar with the design. Meanwhile loads of new people join the internet every day. So it is going to be novel to someone.
- usrusr 4y agoI'm just surprised they didn't go all the way and solve the apparent drag issue that forces them to remove the fan by making that fifth pylon sufficiently operational to fly the extra engine powered, running at some very low throttle level. I know the answer, which is that the fan and the turbine are very much separate entities and that removal of the fan blades is a long shot from taking apart the complete engine, but a more gut level part of my brain still likes to consider the entire pod "the jet engine", and from that point of view it feels as if they'd strip out 90% of "the engine" when in reality the entire turbine remains untouched.
- null0pointer 4y agoWhat I find interesting is that the plane wings are modular enough to actually do stuff like this. Pretty cool!
- bragr 4y ago>the plane wings are modular enough to actually do stuff like this Not really. The 5th pylon is an original design item and is only on the the left wing. When the 747 first started operating, IIRC there were no cargo aircraft big enough to transport fully assembled 747 engines so there was a real logistical concern about transporting spare and faulty engines to and from far flung destinations. It's kind of a relic of a certain age between the dawn of large turbofan engines but before the growth of the modern aviation industry. The presence of that 5th pylon does mean some 747 get used for some interesting things. Virgin Orbit launches their rocket from a heavily upgraded 5th pylon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Girl_(aircraft) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Girl_(aircraft)
- usr1106 4y agoA regular plane option that will go away. Not very quickly, but planes don't live forever either. The last 747 is planned to be built this year. No idea whether any twin engine jet has a 3rd pylon. My guess would be the asymmetry would be much more difficult to handle for offering regular passenger flights.
- sreevisakh 4y agoThe ill-fated Boeing 747 flight AI182 (Kanishka) was carrying an extra engine just like this, when it was destroyed over Atlantic ocean by a terrorist bomb attack in June 1985. The presence of the extra engine was investigated as a possible cause of the disaster before conclusive evidence of a bomb explosion was found. (That and another explosion on the ground at Narita, Japan in a container destined for another Air India flight). [1] https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850623-2 https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850623-...
- EdwardDiego 4y agoWow, "Canadian Sikh terrorists" was not something I was expecting to read about today.
- sreevisakh 4y agoIt was the biggest incident of aviation terrorism prior to 9-11. World was very different back then - not a surprise it sounds improbable today.
- bragr 4y agoI had a similar reaction when I first read about it. kind of crazy how no one was ever really held responsible and then 9-11 just kind of pushed it out of most of the public's collective memory, or at least that's how it seems to me.
- cm2187 4y agoThere has been a lot of terrorist activity continuously in europe since the 60s. In the 60s/70s it was mostly far left terrorism (red brigade, baader-meinhof gang, etc) and some independence movements (FLN or the opposite like OAS). In the 70s/80s independence movements (palestinians, IRA, ETA, etc), and state sponsored terrorism (Iran, Libya). In the 90s it became islamists. The far right committed continuously rare but large attacks (like Oklahoma city, Breivik). If you go further back in history the anarchists were doing a lot of bombings at the end of the XIX early XX. The point is that islamist terrorism isn’t a large uptick in terror activity, both in term of number of incidents and number of victims. They do more spectacular attacks though. But the reaction it created is kind of curious (security in airports, army in the street, state surveillance), particularly in countries with an otherwise large tolerance to crime like the US (tough laws but very high level of crime) and Europe (lax law enforcement) where terrorism is a drop in the ocean of regular crime.
- StillBored 4y agoOk, given its flying just the core, and not the fan, why doesn't it fit in the cargo hold? I mean they wouldn't have to worry about the extra drag/etc in the hold. It also seems odd that they would do this on a plane carrying commercial passengers since it seems more of an "experimental" modification even if the manufacture has approved it.
- bragr 4y agoIt's a design feature dating back to when there were no easy ways to transport the engines. It's a perfectly cromulent way to transport a 747 engine, just uncommon these days because there are many large air freighters now (like the 747 itself). The idea was that in the early days of the 747, airlines could be self sufficient in transporting engines and their new expensive planes wouldn't get stranded.
- dotancohen 4y agoIt should be noted in context that original the 747 could, like the 737 before it, service airfields too small to have service centers. Therefore, it was important that another 747 could ferry in all parts needed to service a potentially damaged 747 at these locations, including an entire engine. Most aircraft with such capability are identified by the inclusion of built-in stairs for passenger ingress/egress, which the 747-100 had.
- dang 4y agoDiscussed at the time (of the article): How Qantas Ferried an Engine on the Wing of a 747 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870123 - Jan 2016 (25 comments)
- rzzzt 4y agoI have never heard or read the word "cowling" before, but just finished watching a video saying that Apple's repair guide refers to the tiny metal covers within the phone this way. Cowling cowling cowling.
- billfruit 4y agoIt is a fairly common term in automotive domain.
- waqf 4y agoDucks have ducklings, so naturally, cows have cowlings.
- Fuhrer01 4y agoThanks!
- embedded_hiker 4y agoOne of the early accomplishments of "NASA", long before it became NASA, was the development of an improved cowling for airplanes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_cowling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_cowling
- rzzzt 4y agoThanks! I was just excited about experiencing the frequency illusion in real life -- fifteen-ish years of English without cowling, then two cowlings in a day from two different sources.
- noipv4 4y agoAir India Flight 182, which was bombed on 06/1985 also carried a spare for repairs. Investigators initially speculated that the extra weight on one side might be the reason for the fatal destruction of the plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182
- avar 4y agoI wonder what design constraints led to not mounting such an engine facing backwards to reduce drag.
- usefulcat 4y agoWhy do you think mounting it backwards would reduce drag?
- Rebelgecko 4y agoDoes this "5th pod" exist solely for transporting spare engines, or does it have other uses?
- sreevisakh 4y agoIt's known to be used for testing new engines and launching rockets [1]. But I don't understand what they mean by 'pod'. Can't figure out if they are referring to the hard point, pylon or the engine nacelle. [1] https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747-5-engines/ https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747-5-engines/
- belter 4y agoThis capability was into the original design of 747, but historically it's not the only model capable of transporting the spare engine. Here is an Air Lanka L-1011-500 TriStar doing the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1011_TriStar#/media/File:Lockheed_L-1011-385-3_TriStar_500,_AirLanka_AN0962210.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1011_TriStar#/media... And an even older DC8: https://nitter.net/PilotJamesB/status/1262751026408378369 https://nitter.net/PilotJamesB/status/1262751026408378369 Other models like the 707-300 or the VC-10 and Super VC-10 also did it: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=775179 https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=775179 Aparently doing this makes the fuel consumption increase a lot. "What are the consequences of attaching an unused extra engine under Boeing 747 wing?': https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/53755/what-are-the-consequences-of-attaching-an-unused-extra-engine-under-boeing-747-w https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/53755/what-are-...