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Well, there's a very big difference between "Engine fire: some of the combustion chamber's heat and flame has breached containment" and, say, "Engine fire: the

Well, there's a very big difference between "Engine fire: some of the combustion chamber's heat and flame has breached containment" and, say, "Engine fire: the engine has exploded, catastrophically damaging your wing which is now visibly on fire". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FIRE. There's also a very big difference between "Engine failure: something has damaged or jammed enough components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FAIL. (Un)fortunately, cockpit warnings prioritise the what (so to speak) and not the how or why. On one hand, this makes decision-making a lot simpler for the crew, but on the other...well, in rare cases the lack of insight can exacerbate a disaster. Depending on when exactly the engine gave out, this poor crew might have been doomed either way, but they might have been able to minimise collateral damage if they knew just how badly crippled the aircraft was. And there was a very similar accident to this one (actually involving the predecessor of the MD-11, the DC-10), American Airlines 191 - one of the engines detached from the aircraft, damaging the leading edge of its wing in the process, causing that wing to stall when the crew slowed down below the stall speed of the damaged wing in a bid to climb. If they could have somehow known about the damage, the accident might have been avoided entirely as the crew might have known to keep their speed up.

eternityforest 1y ago
Could they add cameras to solve this issue?
- roryirvine 1y ago
  During engine failure / fire situations, I would expect that pilots are likely to be too busy to have any time left over for peering at a video feed, trying to assess the state of the wing. In emergencies, information overload tends to make things worse, not better.
  - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
    Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful. It does not add that much workload if you take a quick glance in the “mirror” and figure out what the problem exactly is. And now we have technology that allows for cameras everywhere to give a better situational awareness across all critical aircraft surfaces and systems. It is going to take a little bit of adjusting to, but it will help improve safety in a tremendous way.
    - cedilla 1y ago
      This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a situation where the engine fire alarm is going off, probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on your display that it only shows the most urgent one, you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit already. And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in the background? Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded and probably had only a few seconds to escape this situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine it being helpful.
      - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
        You know how the tail camera works on the new planes? Something like that, which can be far away from the wings, but get the full picture. Am I saying it's the solution for everything? No. But after you go through the memory committed items during an emergency, you can take a look outside and be like "ah, I see better what the problem is". If we don't try to see how it goes, we won't know if it is a good idea or not.
      - wongarsu 1y ago
        It'd certainly need more thought put into it than just showing the camera view from the entertainment system. Either just one camera on the tail pointed forwards, so you have one single camera that can show the whole plane, or two cameras in the front, one pointed at each wing. Two cameras is worse than one, but they are less likely to be affected by smoke or blood splatters or whatever. Maybe give each pilot one of the camera feeds. And you'd have to fit a dedicated screen for the video feed so pilots don't need to switch through screens in an emergency. It'd take lots of testing and engineering. But especially in cases where you have multiple warnings going off I imagine that a quick view at an exterior camera can often give you a clearer/faster indication of the situation
- zuppy 1y ago
  They surely can and this has been done. On one the flights that I took with Turkish Airlines they had a few video streams from different sides of the airplane. One was from the top of the tail and you could see the entire plane. Now... not sure how much that is helpful in this kind of emergency, they really didn't have time to do much.
  - fredoralive 1y ago
    I'm not sure they usually have the views on screen in the cockpit in flight, even if available (and an old MD-11 freighter won't have the cameras in the first place). The picture of an A380 cockpit (on the ground) on Wikipedia does show the tail view on a screen, but its on the screen normally used for main instruments. With an A380 that had an uncontained engine failure causing various bits of havok (Qantas 32?) IIRC the passengers could see a fuel leak on the in flight entertainment screens, but they had to tell the crew as AFAIK they didn't have access to the view in the cockpit in flight.
ragazzina 1y ago
> There's also a very big difference between "Engine failure: something has damaged or jammed enough components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FAIL. What is the difference?
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Wider effects like damage to the wing or changes to aerodynamics. Edit: and damage to other engines, possibly engine #2 in the tail ingesting debris in this instance.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    That's the biggest, the weight gone entirely unbalances the plane; if you knew exactly what happened you MIGHT be able to keep it level (and it seems they did for a bit) but eventually airspeed drops, it tips, and cartwheels (which is apparently what it did from the videos).
    - Modified3019 1y ago
      The aircraft hit the roof of a UPS warehouse, barely clearing it before coming down in the parking lot/junkyard nearby. So when we see it turning over in its last seconds (like the trucker dash cam video), it only had one wing at that point.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - beerandt 1y ago
      Deadweight or no-weight engine is a relatively negligible problem in terms of the weight-balance envelope. Cut fuel & hydraulic lines near that engine (that affect the other engines/ apus) (or less likely structural or aerodynamic problems) is what's going to shift this from "engine failure" recoverable problem to a global nonrecoverable one.

eternityforest 1y ago

Could they add cameras to solve this issue?

roryirvine 1y ago
During engine failure / fire situations, I would expect that pilots are likely to be too busy to have any time left over for peering at a video feed, trying to assess the state of the wing. In emergencies, information overload tends to make things worse, not better.
- ExoticPearTree 1y ago
  Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful. It does not add that much workload if you take a quick glance in the “mirror” and figure out what the problem exactly is. And now we have technology that allows for cameras everywhere to give a better situational awareness across all critical aircraft surfaces and systems. It is going to take a little bit of adjusting to, but it will help improve safety in a tremendous way.
  - cedilla 1y ago
    This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a situation where the engine fire alarm is going off, probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on your display that it only shows the most urgent one, you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit already. And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in the background? Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded and probably had only a few seconds to escape this situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine it being helpful.
    - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
      You know how the tail camera works on the new planes? Something like that, which can be far away from the wings, but get the full picture. Am I saying it's the solution for everything? No. But after you go through the memory committed items during an emergency, you can take a look outside and be like "ah, I see better what the problem is". If we don't try to see how it goes, we won't know if it is a good idea or not.
    - wongarsu 1y ago
      It'd certainly need more thought put into it than just showing the camera view from the entertainment system. Either just one camera on the tail pointed forwards, so you have one single camera that can show the whole plane, or two cameras in the front, one pointed at each wing. Two cameras is worse than one, but they are less likely to be affected by smoke or blood splatters or whatever. Maybe give each pilot one of the camera feeds. And you'd have to fit a dedicated screen for the video feed so pilots don't need to switch through screens in an emergency. It'd take lots of testing and engineering. But especially in cases where you have multiple warnings going off I imagine that a quick view at an exterior camera can often give you a clearer/faster indication of the situation
zuppy 1y ago
They surely can and this has been done. On one the flights that I took with Turkish Airlines they had a few video streams from different sides of the airplane. One was from the top of the tail and you could see the entire plane. Now... not sure how much that is helpful in this kind of emergency, they really didn't have time to do much.
- fredoralive 1y ago
  I'm not sure they usually have the views on screen in the cockpit in flight, even if available (and an old MD-11 freighter won't have the cameras in the first place). The picture of an A380 cockpit (on the ground) on Wikipedia does show the tail view on a screen, but its on the screen normally used for main instruments. With an A380 that had an uncontained engine failure causing various bits of havok (Qantas 32?) IIRC the passengers could see a fuel leak on the in flight entertainment screens, but they had to tell the crew as AFAIK they didn't have access to the view in the cockpit in flight.

ragazzina 1y ago

> There's also a very big difference between "Engine failure: something has damaged or jammed enough components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FAIL. What is the difference?

HPsquared 1y ago
Wider effects like damage to the wing or changes to aerodynamics. Edit: and damage to other engines, possibly engine #2 in the tail ingesting debris in this instance.
- bombcar 1y ago
  That's the biggest, the weight gone entirely unbalances the plane; if you knew exactly what happened you MIGHT be able to keep it level (and it seems they did for a bit) but eventually airspeed drops, it tips, and cartwheels (which is apparently what it did from the videos).
  - Modified3019 1y ago
    The aircraft hit the roof of a UPS warehouse, barely clearing it before coming down in the parking lot/junkyard nearby. So when we see it turning over in its last seconds (like the trucker dash cam video), it only had one wing at that point.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - beerandt 1y ago
    Deadweight or no-weight engine is a relatively negligible problem in terms of the weight-balance envelope. Cut fuel & hydraulic lines near that engine (that affect the other engines/ apus) (or less likely structural or aerodynamic problems) is what's going to shift this from "engine failure" recoverable problem to a global nonrecoverable one.