US Airways Aircraft Almost Had To Make Emergency Landing Two Days Before Splashing Into The Hudson
CNN is reporting that two days before US Airways flight 1549 splashed into the Hudson, passengers on the same airplane say that they heard loud noises coming from the engines and that they were told there might have to be an emergency landing.
From CNN:
"The red lights started going on. A little pandemonium was going on," Jeffrey recalled.
He said the incident occurred over Newark, New Jersey, soon after the plane — also flying as Flight 1549 — had taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York.
"It seemed so loud, like luggage was hitting the side but times a thousand. It startled everyone on the plane," Jeffrey said. "We started looking at each other. The stewardesses started running around. They made an announcement that 'everyone heard the noise, we're going to turn around and head back to LaGuardia and check out what happened.'
"I fly about 50 to 60 times per year, and I've never heard a noise so loud," he said. "It wasn't turbulence, it wasn't luggage bouncing around. It was just completely like the engine was thrown against the side of the plane. It just — it didn't shake the plane but it shook you out of the seat when you're drifting off, it really woke you up. And when it happened again, everyone just started looking at each other and there was a quiet murmuring around the plane, and you could feel the tension rising just in looking.
"I remember turning to my [business] partner and saying, 'I hope you got everything in order back home, life insurance and everything, because that didn't sound good.' "
Another passenger on that earlier flight told CNN:
"About 20 minutes after take-off, the plane had a series of compressor stalls on the right engine. There were several very loud bangs and fire coming out of the engine. The pilot at first told us that we were going to make an emergency landing, but after about five minutes, continued the flight to Charlotte."
Passengers report scare on earlier US Airways Flight 1549 [CNN]
(Photo:El_Enigma)
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Comments:
Why do things like this always show up in the news a few days before I go to fly somewhere?
@Miguel Contreras: Wow, fantastic for you. Way to make a strong representation for the Facebook contributors.
Now how about actually contributing something to the comments instead of inviting yourself to get banned?
@Miguel Contreras: congratulations on being the first to respond to an article five minutes after it was posted. Your ability to make the first reply just puts me in shock and awe. Because you were first your popularity is so intense, and I want to be your friend, get to know you, maybe even meet you in person. Gosh darn', you're such a cool guy for having the first post!
Second!
Wow...that couldn't have been another bird.
"I remember turning to my [business] partner and saying, 'I hope you got everything in order back home, life insurance and everything, because that didn't sound good.' "
Holy shit, fuck this guy.
Second!
Wow, that couldn't have been another bird.
@Miguel Contreras: nope.... last (ever comment by you :P)
so did the mechanics even look at the engine after this problem, or did US Airways say 'screw it... we need this plane in service'
It was a compressor stall, which can occur if an engine sucks up birds. Not GEESE, mind you but small birds. Jet engines are designed to tolerate up to a 4lb bird. Its quite possible that they ate a flock of sparrows and managed to restart the engine and continued on the trip.
Now, if the maintenance crews didn't properly handle this once the plane was on the ground (the fact that it wasn't grounded longer is kinda.. scary) and if someone had ended up dying on the Hudson, I could see this as a problem. As it is - given the skills of the pilot - I don't see it as a problem.
The NTSB is already discussing changing their testing regimen to require engines to survive large bird strikes. That's the best result we can expect from this crash.
Ok while I am the one person here who likes Usair.... this news story along with the request for the media to back off the pilot makes me wonder if there was something wrong with the plane and that the birds made it much worse.
Don't get me wrong, the pilot and crew did a great job.
@Miguel Contreras: Nice knowing you!
On topic: so is the airline ignored this and kept flying the plane?
"I remember turning to my [business] partner and saying, 'I hope you got everything in order back home, life insurance and everything, because that didn't sound good.' "
Fuuuuuuuuck this guy.
@lars2112: Its standard practice - the pilot is part of the NTSB investigation and CANNOT speak to the media.
Wow, the first trolls have found their way over here. Guess there was too much competition over at ICHC.
It sounds like this aircraft was having some compressor issues, yes.... But aren't those compressor issues moot when you fly into a flock of birds? Big birds like that do heavy duty damage and while the compressor issues were possibly a factor, I doubt they alone brought the plane down.
@Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave: Yeah, I thought that was an odd statement too. There's a vid on youtube of an engine that sucks up a small bird and experiences a compressor stall and is flaming out. Its LOUD. Loud bang-bang-bang until they manage to shut the engine off.
Continuous like that, I'd assume to know what it was. Anyway, jetliners are designed to fly on one engine.
Like the clueless general public, the media (and Consumerist) is blissfully unaware of the fact that the same "FLIGHT #" does not in any way shape or form mean the same AIRCRAFT! Find out the TAIL #s then report the NONstory
@Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave: No kidding. Your average flier, regardless of experience, doesn't have the first damn clue about how planes work and what different events would sound like. Just print the facts and leave the speculation of what happened to people who know what the hell they're talking about.
@chemmy: Indeed, and a compressor problem in one engine would not contagiously find its way to the 2nd one.
Its quite obvious they hit *something*. Initial pictures of it floating in the river, you could see bird guts on the "forehead" of the plane.
@Superawesomerad: I was on a plane once where the pilot had to turn around because we thought the gear was malfunctioning. I was sitting beside an Air Force mechanic. He was PISSED because he knew there was nothing wrong.
The SR-71 used to have a problem where one engine would experience a compressor stalls at supersonic speed, which would throw the pilots against the canopy so hard, they would actually get bruises through their helmets, which is how they knew which side the stall was on.
I just wish the news would not find the most hyperbolic people to interview.
"it sounded like the wing was just snapping off."
And what does that sound like?
it didn't shake the plane but it shook you out of the seat when you're drifting off, it really woke you up.
So it only shook your seat and not the airframe? Sorry, sometimes reporters get on my nerves.
Compressor stalls usually aren't that big of an issue. They're not common by any means, but they're largely a non-event. They're also called engine 'flame-outs' because of their tendency to shoot flames out the back of the engines for a second or two before shutting down. They occur because of uneven airflow, causing an abnormal fuel/air combustion mixture. In the event of a compressor stall, planes are still able to maintain stable flight should the other engine(s) be in full operating order. The co-pilot usually just goes through the engine restart checklist and within a few minutes the engine is back up and running. This is assuming, of course, that the engine wasn't damaged beyond operability. There was an interesting case of compressor stalls involving a British Airways 747 flying over an erupting volcano: [en.wikipedia.org]
@lars2112: I think they want the "real" story from the pilot. When you get the press and everyone going in there asking questions, it starts to taint the memory of the pilot, by introducing things into his head they weren't there before. IIRC, they try to debrief people as soon as they can to get all the facts while they are fresh and untainted in your mind after many accidents/incidents. I know from personal observation that after one crash in NYC(everyone survived), the pilot, crew, and passengers had guards put on them to keep the press away, and then the passengers issued their statement within the next two days, but after being interviewed by the NTSB.
I'm sure they(the NTSB, the Airline, psychs, etc.) are taking it nice and slow with him and the rest of the crew to make sure they get all the facts, and don't stress him.
@Superawesomerad: Nothing like a little positivity to get through. I would have told him to go fuck himself right there.
...and before anyone makes a FURTHER incorrect comment...there are hundreds of Airbuses in their fleet...all different TAIL #s. Duh.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: And there's no reason to think that this wasn't looked at properly once the plane was back on the ground, because it's not remotely surprising that a large bird ingestion in both engines shut them down.
Does anybody remember the British soi-disant explorer bitching to the press about the oxygen system on the Ryanair flight--because the bags didn't inflate? Don't look out the window, dude--parts of that poorly made wing are bending!
@Zeruel: Compressor stalls can happen if you fly through an area of exhaust, have weird airflow, etc... They don't necessarily damage the engine, but can. I'm guessing when they landed, they checked the engine and found it to be caused by something simple, as it re-started and ran w/no further problems, saw no damage, and cleared it.
Something to remember is that "Correlation does not imply causation". If my car backfires/stalls one day, and a deer hits me two days later, causing me to crash, the stall didn't have anything to do with the crash.
@Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave: @Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave:
You should have heard the sensationalist reporters here in NYC reporting that it was a fully loaded US Airways A380 that crashed into the Hudson River... Apparently the news media cares about ratings and well... sensationalism. Not facts.
I smell lawsuit...
@chemmy: I'm in NJ. I heard them all while I was wishing "The Simpsons" were on instead of coverage. Just made me angry. I swear sometimes the media gets spiteful/angry when they are refused the access they want, and just go overboard making wild claims so that someone will HAVE to comment just to stop the spread of gross mis-information.
@Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave: More hyperbole and scare-based reporting from the national media. They don't understand aircraft, and won't be bothered to, when there are old ladies in Peoria to rile up.
Compressor stalls on the SR-71 were normally referred to as unstarts - that's typically what's going on. An unstart on the CFM-56 used by this Airbus (same engine as on 737s the world over) would be the result of a pressure surge caused by damaged turbomachinery behind the combustor - so it's likely a bird or other FOD caused the damage. In the case of the SR-71, unstarts were caused by supersonic flow entering the engine - a very different cause.
@Mr.B-Natural_GitEmSteveDave: If my car backfires/stalls one day, and a deer hits me two days later, causing me to crash, the stall didn't have anything to do with the crash.
You can't make this comparison; when an engine stalls, it literally "unstarts" - that is, airflow in an axial turbine like the CFM-56 really does run backward through the engine.
A minor stall could be caused by something minor - too steep a climb, flying through disturbed air - but it can cause damage in and of itself or be caused by major mechanical problems that aren't self-evident, like a turbine case that's out of true. Let's wait for the NTSB to shed some light on the condition of the engines before we start comparing a passenger jet to the SR-71.
@DeanOfAllTrades: Why, because they should have installed the standard yet completely nonexistent Flock of Geese Barriers when the mechanic checked out the engines after the stall?
@CaliforniaCajun: Weren't the "spikes", which were originally analog and mechanical, b/c the designer or project head didn't trust digital stuff, the cause of most un-starts? As I understand it the stalls/un-starts happened when air was expelled out the front of the engine due to pressure, which caused the compressor to stop, leading to the stall ? When they were switched over to digital after it was shown that the system could do things no analog system could, un-starts pretty much ceased. I was just using it as an example of a stall being caused by something other than impacts, and how they were problems at HIGH speeds(mach 1+), but not deadly.
@MerleJibran: Read the article: "EAC confirms that US Airways ship number N106US flew on January 13, 2009, and January 15, 2009, with the same flight number of AWE 1549 from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas [International] Airport in North Carolina," Expert Aviation said in a statement to CNN."
And here, for your convenience, you can see pictures of her:[www.planepictures.net]
I don't see why it matters. It's pretty much a given that the issue with both engines was the goose strike. If one engine stalled, and they were able to restart within a couple minutes and it remained normal for the rest of the flight, then it's a non-issue. A two-engine A320 only needs one engine to takeoff, fly and land normally. Hence why they warned the passengers of the possibility of having to make an unplanned landing, but when it showed no problems, they continued.
If there had been any damage or other issue, the odds of it functioning just fine through several more takeoffs and flights, then miraculously failing just as the jet flew through a flock of geese that showed on radar and knocked out the other engine are impossibly long.
@TVGenius: And considering that the pilot would've realized something was wrong with the engine long before becoming airborne (especially over two whole days of operations, differing crews and all) whatever problem presented itself on the previous flight was undoubtedly fixed.
@CaliforniaCajun: i believe you just restated what GitEmSteveDave had already put forth: stalls can be minor and may or may not cause damage. and his analogy regarding causation and correlation was spot on. a backfire and a deer hit are two unrelated items.
i understand your hesitancy to say definitively that the stall had nothing to do with the accident, but I think NTSB will likely come out an say there was no connection between the crash and the stall, considering that the stall ocurred on only the right enginer according to reports and there doesn't appear to be any doubt that both engines were knocked out of commission before the plane went into the drink a few days ago.
@CaliforniaCajun: According to the preliminary report from the NTSB(Don't ask me WHY I have their incident site bookmarked, I have no clue), which may include errors: [www.ntsb.gov]
@stre: thanks. I think he was responding to my post below, but it ended up here.
If I'm ever on a flight that stalls for whatever reason, I want THAT pilot and THOSE weather conditions and a handy, large body of water within landing distance. Talk about a confluence of fortunate circumstances.
On another note: We got some ruuude commenters on board today!
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Not to disagree with you, but EAC is: Expert Aviation Consulting, an Indianapolis aviation consulting firm with close industry ties, and not an "official body". Just saying, until verified by an official, it's still speculation.
Why is it scary? FOD inspections on a jet engine take only a few hours. You look in the intake, the exhaust, and there are usually inspection holes somewhere inside the compressor section. If you don't see anything you run the engine on the ground. If it makes full power and responds normally during all phases of operation there is no further action required.
Compressor stalls happen. They are no reason to do any special inspections or replace any parts. It's loud and it might be scary but it happens.
we don't do that crap here