Lindsey |
March 24th, 2009 12:07 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by ktinkel
(Post 53434)
Not pleasant. I think Redoubt is even larger. Did it have any effect on your flight? You were probably far enough away to avoid it — ash is very destructive for motors. Car owners usually wrap nylon stockings over air intakes, but I can’t imagine what an airplane would need!
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Basically, an airliner needs to stay away from the plume! Which is one reason that they monitor active volcanos. I saw a very scary 20/20 episode some years back about a jet that had all of its engines stall when they ran into an ash plume unawares -- it was a volcano that erupted somewhere in Asia, I think. And this was some time ago, before there was the sort of monitoring there is now. The pilots had no clue what had gone wrong, the only knew that the engines had stalled, that they could no longer see out of the front (do they call that a windshield?), and there was something that looked like an electrical discharge gliding over the surface of the plane. It must have felt like entering the Twilight Zone.
Oh--yeah, this is the one. British Airways Flight 009 from London Heathrow to Aukland in 1982. I had forgotten this part: This was a 747, they're flying over the Indian Ocean, all four engines had flamed out nearly simultaneously, and the crew is facing the prospect of having to ditch into the sea if they cannot get a sufficient number of engines restarted. Oh, and they're well above the recommended altitude for an in-flight engine re-start. The passengers can both see and feel that something is badly wrong, and some of them are calm and resigned, some near hysteria.
And then the pilot comes on the intercom, and with typical British understatement says:
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.
The pilots finally did manage to re-start the engines and get the plane landed safely, but it was a heart-stopping feat of expert piloting that did it.
Oh, ouch -- reading a little farther down, a KLM flight had a similar experience over Alaska after a 1989 eruption of Mount Redoubt. They managed to restart the engines, too, and landed safely in Anchorage, but I'm sure Judy figures that's the kind of excitement she can well live without. (Later: I see Judy was already aware of that one.)
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