Last Queen of the Skies

[Lootman]

Sad to read today that the last ever 747 has been built by Boeing. A few years ago I had the good fortune to visit the Everett, WA facility where it was built for over 50 years.

It is getting harder to fly on one since the pandemic when many airlines decommissioned their 747s, including most notably British Airways. If you want to fly a 747 these days your best bet is on Lufthansa which operates a number of them on long-haul flights. I hope to fly one next year to say my farewells to my favourite plane.'

https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/12/1 ... s-factory/

[bungeejumper]

A friend used to be a British Airways test pilot. Whenever a new 747 was delivered, his job was to take it out high over the Atlantic and give it a proper going-over through a series of stress tests. One of which was to turn the engines off, one by one, let it glide for fifty miles or so, and then turn the engines on again and come home. He adored that plane.

BJ

[Spet0789]

A friend used to be a British Airways test pilot. Whenever a new 747 was delivered, his job was to take it out high over the Atlantic and give it a proper going-over through a series of stress tests. One of which was to turn the engines off, one by one, let it glide for fifty miles or so, and then turn the engines on again and come home. He adored that plane.

BJ

As a pilot, I’m afraid this is a misunderstanding or bar-room exaggeration from your friend!

The tests may have been to shut each engine down and then restart, but there’s no valid reason to shut them all down and glide, so no airline would contemplate doing so.

When the aircraft was developed I expect a Boeing test pilot may have tested whether the aircraft can maintain altitude on one engine, with one or two of the others running but at idle but there is no need to do more than that.

[Lootman]

A friend used to be a British Airways test pilot. Whenever a new 747 was delivered, his job was to take it out high over the Atlantic and give it a proper going-over through a series of stress tests. One of which was to turn the engines off, one by one, let it glide for fifty miles or so, and then turn the engines on again and come home. He adored that plane.

As a pilot, I’m afraid this is a misunderstanding or bar-room exaggeration from your friend!

I am sure the tests will have been to switch each engine (very possibly two at once) off and then restart, but there’s no valid reason to shut them all down and glide, so no airline would contemplate doing so.

As a pilot then I will defer to you. However that BA 777 that crashed just short of Heathrow a few years ago (with thankfully no loss of life, but total hull loss) was an example of all engines failing at once (albeit 2 engines rather than 4). Should that possibility not be trained for? As I recall the issue was fuel starvation rather than mechanical failure.

Then there was the East Midlands airport incident where again a plane landed short of the runway - a 737 this time, where the pilots shut down the wrong engine because of ambiguous indicators.

I can imagine that test pilots engage in more dramatic failure scenarios than happens in everyday training.

[mc2fool]

Have y'all forgotten....

"Air Transat Flight 236 was a transatlantic flight bound for Lisbon, Portugal, from Toronto, Canada, that lost all engine power while flying over the Atlantic Ocean on August 24, 2001. The Airbus A330 ran out of fuel due to a fuel leak caused by improper maintenance. Captain Robert Piché, 48, an experienced glider pilot, and First Officer Dirk DeJager, 28, glided the plane to a successful emergency landing in the Azores, saving all 306 people (293 passengers and 13 crew) on board. ... This was also the longest passenger aircraft glide without engines, gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 kilometres. Following this unusual aviation accident, this aircraft was nicknamed the "Azores Glider"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

[Spet0789]

A friend used to be a British Airways test pilot. Whenever a new 747 was delivered, his job was to take it out high over the Atlantic and give it a proper going-over through a series of stress tests. One of which was to turn the engines off, one by one, let it glide for fifty miles or so, and then turn the engines on again and come home. He adored that plane.

As a pilot, I’m afraid this is a misunderstanding or bar-room exaggeration from your friend!

I am sure the tests will have been to switch each engine (very possibly two at once) off and then restart, but there’s no valid reason to shut them all down and glide, so no airline would contemplate doing so.

As a pilot then I will defer to you. However that BA 777 that crashed just short of Heathrow a few years ago (with thankfully no loss of life, but total hull loss) was an example of all engines failing at once (albeit 2 engines rather than 4). Should that possibility not be trained for? As I recall the issue was fuel starvation rather than mechanical failure.

Then there was the East Midlands airport incident where again a plane landed short of the runway - a 737 this time, where the pilots shut down the wrong engine because of ambiguous indicators.

I can imagine that test pilots engage in more dramatic failure scenarios than happens in everyday training.

Engine failure is certainly trained for.

In flight you reduce the power on the engine to idle to simulate failure. That way it’s not producing (meaningful) thrust, but if you do need it for real, for example if another engine suffers a real failure, you can just throttle it back up. In the simulator, more extreme scenarios involving multiple failures for example can be safely trained for.

I have only flown twins and singles, never a four engined aircraft. Perhaps on a 747 given the redundancy one or at the outside two engines may be fully shut down in flight in testing, but the only aircraft would ever fully shut down its engine(s) on purpose in flight is a touring motor glider, which as the name suggests is basically a glider with an engine.

[tjh290633]

I was once on a Northwest Airline flight from Detroit to Milwaukee and the pilot cut the engines to an idle at about 20,000 feet over Lake Michigan. He brought the737 in on a perfect glide approach, using no power until a bit of reverse thrust once down.

I've done it once myself in an Airspeed Oxford from 2,000 feet when we had a forced landing competition, so was well able to appreciate this display of airmanship.

TJH