A Boeing cargo airliner made an emergency landing in Florida on Thursday night after what its operator called “an engine malfunction” occurred shortly after takeoff, in the latest setback for the beleaguered company. A gaping hole where a paneled-over door had been at the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Sunday 7 January 2024 Boeing opens factories to airlines and adds more checks after blowout Read more
Video taken by an eyewitness and posted to social media showed the 747-8 aircraft trailing flames and sparks from its left wing as it circled back to land at Miami international airport at about 10.30pm.
The operator, New York-based Atlas Air, said the plane “experienced an engine malfunction soon after departure”. Its crew of five “followed all standard procedures and safely returned” to the airport, it said in a statement, adding it would conduct a “thorough inspection to determine the cause”.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday it would be investigating the incident, adding that the eight-year-old Boeing 747-8 aircraft was heading for Puerto Rico. Its preliminary report stated that an inspection after the flight had landed revealed a “softball-sized hole” above one of its four engines, but did not specify when or how it occurred.
The plane, colloquially known as a jumbo jet, is equipped with four General Electric GEnx engines. The pilot reported a fire in the left wing engine closest to the fuselage, according to cockpit audio of the emergency call.
If you see a plane having issues in the sky, try to move away perpendicular to its path. If it goes down, it’ll be hard to predict where it will end up since it can change direction as it dives, but anything falling off of it should generally follow its inertia. Though with thrusters, if there’s even a bit of thrust still when it detaches, it can also wildly change its momentum.
Another thing to remember is that if something is falling but it doesn’t look like it’s moving, it’s falling towards you. Again, move to the side and keep going until it looks like it is drifting to one side or another. Odds are very low that it will hit you even if you stand still, but that can help your odds if that makes you feel any better about it.
Oh, being hit by an aircraft engine is one of those thing where if it happens - sorry the universe was involved in that one. My tombstone would probably say something like “doesn’t like planes as much as he used to” or “here lies most of happy camper and a turbine blade we think has a smear or two”.