Again...a Bird

[YankssRule]

This article is in today's NY Daily News: :coffee

Bird in Engine, jet forced to Land:
Chicago - An American Airlines flight made an emergency landing at O'Hare Airport yesterday after a bird was sucked into its engine just minutes after takeoff, officials said.
Flight 1353, bound for New Orleans, was about 200 feet in the air when at least one bird was sucked into its right engine, said AA spokeswoman. The aircraft turned around and landed safely.
No one on board was hurt.
Since September, two other planes were forced to make emergency landings at O'Hare after birds were sucked into their engines.
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I would have thought that with the technology there is today, the planes would still be able to fly when this sort of stuff happens. Guess not.

Janet :sunshine

[Debbielevis2]

God****ed birds should learn how to fly!

They may have been first at it, but people do it better!

(Mark, do I get kicked off for swearing?)

Sorry

Deb

[lieberma]

Hi Janet,

Planes that have more then one engine are certified to fly with less then their full compliment of engines.

Trying not to be so graphic, it's not so much the fact the engine ate the bird, but what other damage may have happened to the airframe (as well as the engine).

What goes in the engine, must come out. What came out behind the engine, may have hit something equally important as the engine, such as a wing part, or a tail part.

The pilot cannot easily see outside his window to assess any residual damage that may have resulted from a bird strike.

So, when in doubt, pilots will come back and land.

Allen

[spiffyone]

How do they know they hit a bird?

Plane....THIS big.

Bird....THIS big.

How do they know?

:hamster

[lieberma]

Spiffyone,

Us little small guys (general aviation), know very quickly, as birds do leave a mess of they encounter our propellor.

Bigger jets, have engine sensors that detect irregulararities in the performance of the engine (sort of like an EKG to a heart),

If an engine bumps into a bird, and bird doesn't escape, the engine sensor would say, "look at me", something is wrong with what I am watching. Bird inside engine, I am sure doens't make for a smooth running engine especially when bird is getting processed. :cry

I am simplifying the process, but I am sure you get the gist!:tada

Allen

[Passenger Mark]

From the article...

No one on board was hurt.

Well... WHAT ABOUT THE BIRD???

I just hate it when they only tell half of the story!

[lieberma]

Mark,

The bird wasn't hurt, he was killed. Story was journalistical correct.

:jump Now, if the story had said there were no fatalities....:jump

Allen

[sengelin]

How do they know? Instruments, yes. But there's also a nasty smell. Yuck! Bird-in-the-engine makes the cabin air smell like goose fried in kerosene, which is basically what it is.

Sean

[Passenger Mark]

goose fried in kerosene

For real??? You would be able to smell it?

Ughh :barf

[CaptainStark]

Two distinct issues: 1-Bird through fan 2-Bird through engine

The JT-8 engine used on the older jets (MD-80, 737-200) is a mid-bypass fan engine. That means the fan (propeller on the front of the engine) is smaller. What this means is, the chances of a bird making into the engine is higher because the fan only extends about 4 inches past the intake of the engine. If the bird makes it through the outside fan circumference, it misses the engine intake.

The newer engines have a much bigger fan and that means, as a percentage of the front of the engine, the actual air intake part of the engine is really a small part of the front of the engine. Birds through fans usually go unnoticed. Birds in the engine smell like burnt oily feathers. It's yuckky. Usually, a small bird produces a puff of smell that passes quickly. A flock of small birds is "mo smelly."

It's the bigger birds that present the potential for damage to the engines as they enter the turbine section. The turbine is rotating at warp 12 and tossing in a good sized goose would be like tossing the same goose in your top-loader washer on spin cycle. Wobble city.

Plus the engine tolerances are pretty tight and things that don't give tend to break. Having "chunkules" of motor parts wandering back through the motor only messes things up worse. In my book, I chronicle a friend who watched an engine he happened to be staring at disintegrate after a goose strike. The red glow of the fireball out of the engine was bright enough to illuminate the heads of those seated for rows ahead of him. No biggee. They were on descent anyway.

Ray:ray

PS. I'll try to post a CFM on a 700 picture to the picture forum. If anyone can transfer it here, that would be GREAT!

The FAN is the big silver thing (with fan blades!!!) around the entire circumference of the motor inlet. The engine air intake is the small vaned section nearer the middle of the motor, just outside the spinner. (not the best pic -a little washed out. The inlet is the inner fifth of the circumference of the fan)

http://www.takingflight.us/gallery/albums/userpics/10014/WebMotor.jpg

[Debbielevis2]

<<They were on descent anyway>> says Ray.

Who? The pax or the birds??:chicken

Ucky visuals here.

Gonna go pack.

Deb

[sengelin]

For real??? You would be able to smell it?

Ray talks about it on page 109 of his book and I've had the displeasure of smelling it myself as we encountered a flock of birds on approach to DFW.

Ray refers to it as "the disgusting smell ... of burning oily feathers" or a "fishy" smell. I'm going with goose fried in kerosene. :chicken

Incidentally, we need a barfy-smiley.

[WillFlyToDisney2]

We have one!

:fly :bigplane :barf

:)
Kelley

[spleisher]

ahhhh.. my favorite smiley :barf

[spiffyone]

So...now wait.

An engine turned into a FIREBALL and they landed safely?

What happens - does the engine start to go after it eats the bird, and then, what, do the pilots just shut that engine down to make it stop fireballing?

If it's not on, or whatever, does that stop the fire?

(An aside - I went to a crew reunion for college last night. My fabled "last flight" for 15 years before I started flying again last year was a flight home from winter training in Florida. I flew with my friend Becca, who rowed with me - haven't seen her in 15 years either. She mentioned the flight last night. Said it was the worst flight she's ever had in her life, says the turbulence was so bad that people's drinks were spilling and coming off their trays. I felt so much better when she said that - I think I thought I was imagining how bad it was all those years ago.)

So - I'm validated now!!

:hamster

[sengelin]

Wow! Don't know how I missed that one! :barf

As for the burning engine, when the pilots activate the fire extinguisher it also cuts off the fuel to that engine. Even if the engine continues burning after the fuel is cut off, the engine pilon itself has parts that will melt and allow the engine to fall away before the fire harms the wing. Then you just fly with the other engine.

Sean

[CaptainStark]

A jet engine has two kind of blades: Fan blades (the big gray ones in the pic above) and turbine blades.

The turbine blades are inside the engine and compress the air and then, once it's ignited, extract the energy that makes the engine turn which, rotates the fan, makes the thrust and pulls the plane along.

Those turbine blades are of varying size but the longest is only about 4 inches long. There are HUNDREDS of these precise little airfoils in the engine and the tolerances between the fan blades and their neighbor fan blades is very tight. Air slips through magically. So do very small birds. Geese break these turbine blades if they hit the motor just right and, with the airflow in a motor from front to back, if anything gets loose in a turbine compressor section, it usually trashes out the rest of the section, along with the turbine section or hot section, in the very back of the motor.

When the motor is running, it is ON FIRE. A constant ring of flame is burning inside and that makes the magic happen. Bash all the teeth out of your motor while the gas is still pouring in and voila! You have a very expensive Olympic torch with flames extending many feet out of the back of the motor.

The engine is designed to contain a failure. Kevlar belts back-up alloy that makes up the motor casing. All the parts blow out the back of the motor and you are left with a blow torch. I might add, a blow torch doesn't help push the plane along.

The pilots get the "blowtorch light" (FIRE) and shut the motor down. This takes the fuel, electricity, hydraulic pressure, and pneumatic bleed away from the motor. In seconds the fire should extinguish and the engine should cool down very quickly. End of problem. Then you go land at the nearest suitable airport and get another plane.

Engineers try to make the motor "bird proof" but you can only do so much. That's why they give us "extra" motors.

Ray:ray