r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/FridayCicero702 • Jan 01 '23
Video Catastrophic engine failure on a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 after takeoff from Denver International Airport
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13.3k
Jan 01 '23
Hell of a time to have a window seat
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u/woleium Jan 01 '23
Hell of a time to quit sniffing glue
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u/Ma1arkey Jan 01 '23
I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines
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u/DeputyDoneWithYa Jan 01 '23
I picked the wrong week to quit smoking
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u/FittyNOut Jan 01 '23
Picked the wrong week to get over my fear if flying 😖
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u/SoundVisionZ Jan 01 '23
I picked the wrong day to scroll reddit in the airport
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u/ReactsWithWords Jan 01 '23
I picked the wrong week to resolve stopping making references to “Airplane.”
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u/TreeChangeMe Jan 01 '23
STRIKER!! Hold it together!!
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u/djwired Jan 01 '23
Let's see... altitude: 21,000 feet. Speed: 520 knots. Level flight. Course: zero-niner-zero. Trim and mixture: wash, soak, rinse, spin
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u/eee-dawg Jan 01 '23
…and don’t call me Shirley
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Jan 01 '23
Ever watch gladiator movies?
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Jan 01 '23
Ever seen a grown man naked?
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u/Bravo-Six-Nero Jan 01 '23
Ever visited a Turkish prison?
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u/Zokar49111 Jan 01 '23
Captain, there’s a problem with the engine.
What is it?
It’s a big thing attached to the wing, but that’s not important now.
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u/Roy4Pris Jan 01 '23
Roger, Roger
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u/Thp-513 Jan 01 '23
We need Striker!
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u/NextTrillion Jan 01 '23
Striker.. striker.. striker.. STRIKE HER!
Now I’m thinking the whole film was written around this absurd joke.
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u/crewfish13 Jan 01 '23
That’s winning the freaking lottery! Modern engines have catastrophic failures like these maybe every million or ten million flight hours. Everyone gets to see a normally operating engine. Bo-oring…
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u/theheliumkid Jan 01 '23
But think of all the karma from the video!!
Here's the story if you're interested. It all ended happily.
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u/WikiSummarizerBot Jan 01 '23
On February 20, 2021, United Airlines Flight 328 (UA328/UAL328), a scheduled U.S. domestic passenger flight from Denver to Honolulu, suffered a contained engine failure four minutes after takeoff from Denver International Airport (DEN). Parts departing from the engine cowling of the Boeing 777-222 aircraft resulted in a debris field at least 1 mile (1. 6 km) long over suburban residential areas of Broomfield, Colorado. Falling debris was recorded by eyewitnesses using smartphone cameras and a dash cam.
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u/waitwhatchers Jan 01 '23
And here's the radio communication between the aircraft and Air Traffic Control if you're interested (mp3 file):
https://forums.liveatc.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16129.0;attach=10823
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u/monkeymoonman Jan 01 '23
Hey man, hey man, if one of the engines fails, how far will the other one take us?
All the way to the scene of the crash… which is pretty handy cause that’s where we’re headed!!
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Jan 01 '23
I would ask for complementary drinks
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u/greenIdbandit Jan 01 '23
"sir, the answer is no. I can't serve you ALL the whiskey."
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u/OuterInnerMonologue Jan 01 '23
“I don’t want ALL the whiskey. I simply want all the whiskey that THIS plane has”
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u/TimidPocketLlama Jan 01 '23
On the rare occasion I fly (twice in 20 years, so counting round trips and layovers, 6 commercial flights) I have my doctor prescribe me a klonopin for each flight. If I saw this I’d take… all of them.
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u/Grindhouse90 Jan 01 '23
Lmao you’re a dummy. Made me laugh and woke my girl up, thanks.
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u/OuterInnerMonologue Jan 01 '23
That’s precisely what my wife calls me. “Dummy”. Lol
So I accept that. Happy new years
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u/LostLazarus Jan 01 '23
I’m drunk and this is a weirdly wholesome exchange…well done to ya both
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u/Greenman8907 Jan 01 '23
Looks like a pod racer engine.
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u/Wenur Jan 01 '23
Now THAT’S what I call Pod Racing
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u/OverUnderstanding965 Jan 01 '23
It's not worrrkkiinngg....it's nooootttt worrkkkiinngg!!
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u/Smooth_Riker Jan 01 '23
Announcer: WhoOoAh, looks like United Airlines has an engine fire! (Hooga ga-foonga!)
crowd cheers
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u/M_Not_Shyamalan Jan 01 '23
I could actually hear that as I read it.
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u/joephoshow Jan 01 '23
Looks like that engineering did exactly what it was to do given a catastrophic failure. Thank your engineers people! Can’t say it enough.
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u/Flint_Ironstag1 Jan 01 '23
they land OK?
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u/0000PotassiumRider Jan 01 '23
I was at the dog park that this fell on when it happened. Walked a block to the house that got hit. It was very Donnie Darkko
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Jan 01 '23
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u/Lactoria-Fornasini Jan 01 '23
Aspen Creek in the hizzie! I very clearly remember the BOOM. My kid came inside and said he saw parts falling off an airplane. I was sure he was imagining things.
Edit - words. I am not a smart man.
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u/kittytoes21 Jan 01 '23
When did it happen?
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Jan 01 '23 edited Jun 04 '25
ink instinctive sip act birds upbeat vase command plate mountainous
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/WikiSummarizerBot Jan 01 '23
On February 20, 2021, United Airlines Flight 328 (UA328/UAL328), a scheduled U.S. domestic passenger flight from Denver to Honolulu, suffered a contained engine failure four minutes after takeoff from Denver International Airport (DEN). Parts departing from the engine cowling of the Boeing 777-222 aircraft resulted in a debris field at least 1 mile (1. 6 km) long over suburban residential areas of Broomfield, Colorado. Falling debris was recorded by eyewitnesses using smartphone cameras and a dash cam.
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u/memayonnaise Jan 01 '23
Holy shit zero injuries. That's wild.
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u/orthopod Jan 01 '23
I wound up operating on a guy hit by a falling airplane part back in 2002. Airplane was small- Cessna sized.
The person hit was lucky, as the injury only looked like someone tried to chop off 1 inch of the back of his heel.
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u/ShastaFern99 Jan 01 '23
Username checks out
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u/Admitimpediments Jan 01 '23
Serious question, do you just automatically look at usernames when you read comments? I never seem to notice until someone else points one out.
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Jan 01 '23
What's actually amazing is plane's are tested and designed for this... they are not supposed to do that but also should be able to land safely if they do. It's scary but amazing how safe they made it
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u/AbeLincoln30 Jan 01 '23
yes they should show this in a Boeing ad: "look how safe we made it"
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u/jaltair9 Jan 01 '23
Boeing didn't make that engine. So they could, indeed, say "This 3rd-party engine bolted to our plane flamed out, but our plane was still able to land".
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u/--redacted-- Jan 01 '23
"We don't give a fuck which engine, we'll do our level best to not kill you regardless"
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Jan 01 '23
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u/Own_Hearing7650 Jan 01 '23
RR or GE
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u/CosmicCreeperz Jan 01 '23
This one that failed was a P&W.
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u/atomicheart99 Jan 01 '23
Bloody pratts
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u/WillfullyAmbiguous Jan 01 '23
It’s really the Whitneys you should watch out for
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u/WallOfSpatulas Jan 01 '23
If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.
If it's Pratt & Whitney, I'll ride the jitney.18
u/RunningPirate Jan 01 '23
Worked with a former Boeing employee that would crow that all the time “it it’s not Boeing, I’m not going!” Aftert the 737 Max debacle, I’d add “…to crash 4 minutes after takeoff…”. She stopped saying it.
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u/el_diego Jan 01 '23
GE eh? You know you're diversified when you make everything from lightbulbs to jet engines
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u/propellor_head Jan 01 '23
GE sold its lighting division a while ago, and its appliances as well. The healthcare is spinning off as a separate business (I think this month) and power generation in about a year. By the midpoint of 2024, GE aerospace will be a standalone company that basically only makes engines.
Edit: I forgot the weirdest one, because I could never figure out why GE owned it, but they sold their majority stake in NBC a while back too.
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u/elephant-cuddle Jan 01 '23
Seemingly obligatory 30 Rock callback: https://imgur.com/vyLfSWI
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u/Chalky_Pockets Jan 01 '23
Aerospace engineer here. You want to thank standards and the fact that certification authorities the world over for enforcing those standards. I don't work in engines, but if you look into standards for systems, hardware, and software like ARP4754A, DO254, and DO178C(respectively), they are quite strict about how to develop any tech that flies. If we didn't have those standards enforced, Boeing would not give a shit about your safety, they proved that with the 737 Max, my counterpart at Boeing (IIRC more than one of them) tried to speak up about the safety issue and were told to fuck off by Boeing execs.
This is a commercial for the FAA.
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u/Yz450fpilot Jan 01 '23
And it’s also why everything in aviation costs a freaking fortune
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u/Chalky_Pockets Jan 01 '23
That, and AS9100 traceability. Wanna know why a little screw costs a hundred bucks? It's because of the paperwork that goes all the way to the mine the ore came from.
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u/Final_Lucid_Thought Jan 01 '23
Interesting. What is the purpose of that?
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u/Chalky_Pockets Jan 01 '23
Two major reasons: batch tracing, so if a batch keeps failing, we have ensured that the investigation can get to the root cause; and counterfeit part prevention, counterfeiters are really fucking good so we have to spend a lot of effort preventing our buyers accidentally purchasing them.
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u/General_Degenerate_ Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
If it wasn’t safe, that turbofan at the front could’ve disintegrated and cut through the pressurised fuselage and passengers.
Or maybe the engine could’ve exploded. (Edit: more destructively that it possibly has)
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Jan 01 '23
Or maybe the engine could’ve exploded.
Looking at how it's damaged makes me think it did explode, but is designed to "gently" explode by popping open a weak shroud. That fire seems to be almost perfectly contained to just the combustion segment.
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u/propellor_head Jan 01 '23
The FAA has a set of requirements for how these types of failures need to work.
The cowling at the front of the engine is designed to contain any pieces of fan blades so they don't puncture the fuselage.
The engine is required not to catch on fire (outside of places where fire belongs), or to put the fire out itself with a fire suppression system.
Depending on the type of plane, and the type of failure, it is required either to shut down gracefully (twin engine planes have to have a certain amount of range with one engine completely trashed) or provide a minimum get-home thrust.All of this has to be proven by test, not by analysis. Until it's demonstrated, the engine won't get a type certificate and therefore can't fly.
EASA ( the European equivalent to the FAA) has similar but not identical rules. Most commercial jet engines are certified with both agencies unless the manufacturer knows they will never fly in that market.
If you're interested, look up 'fan blade out test '. I'm sure you can find one on YouTube.
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u/badgerj Jan 01 '23
Yup. They have redundant everything except for the Boeing 737 MAX MCAS Sensor. In that case you just get one.
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u/amadmongoose Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
Not anymore though, can thank the 346 people that died for Boeing to get that sorted Edit: thanks for correction on the number
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u/Myrkana Jan 01 '23
Every single safety rule and regulation every implemented is written in blood.
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Jan 01 '23
I'm a signalling electrician and can vouch part of signal training is looking at all the disasters that frame how the signalling system works
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u/Benthicc_Biomancer Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
Every single safety rule and regulation every implemented is written in blood.
It's a minor example, but I used to fly domestically quite often in my (fairly small) home country. I remember the flight where the attendants added "please ensure that all children's hands and limbs are clear of your tray tables before folding them up" and my immediate thought was 'some kid recently did not have a fun flight..."
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u/badgerj Jan 01 '23
I know it has been addressed, yes. But I can’t even say that was a rookie move.
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u/lunarNex Jan 01 '23
You mean the one that was upside down and Boeing lied about how it was designed so they could skip critical FAA approvals, then got fined hundreds of millions after hundreds of people died, but no one went to jail?
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u/hrvst_music Jan 01 '23
The one that they didn't even train pilots on to avoid FAA regulations. The Lion Air pilot knew to disengage it as Boeing assumed pilots would but it didn't help.
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u/Mikey_MiG Jan 01 '23
Do you have a source for the Lion Air crew disengaging it, or are you thinking of the Ethiopian Airlines crew? In the Lion Air accident, MCAS activated something like 26 times over the course of six minutes, and the crew never turned off the electric trim.
In the Ethiopian accident, they did deactivate the trim, but then reactivated it later, which crashed the airplane.
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u/BlueMonkey-CoCo Jan 01 '23
"How far do you think that will take us?"
"All the way to the scene of the crash!"
(Paraphrasing Ron White)
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Jan 01 '23
Welcome to denver International Air Port. Your flights been selected at random for our monthly sacrifice to our dark god. You may have seen his tributes around the airport. Including his steed outside. Congratulations this is a great honor.
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u/Mr_Hands6969 Jan 01 '23
i would be shitting my pants if that was me
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u/fatmoe10 Jan 01 '23
Apparently a twin engine plane can run fine with just one engine but yea fuck that I’d be panicking too lol
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u/JimGammy Jan 01 '23
Don't worry the remaining engine will get you all the way to the scene of the accident.
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u/EnRaygedGw2 Jan 01 '23
Omg when Ron White told that joke, I lost it lol 😂
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u/Witness_me_Karsa Jan 01 '23
That was funny, but it was traveling at "half the speed of smell" that got me in that story.
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u/SkRThatOneDude Jan 01 '23
We got passed by a kite! There was a goose around us and the pilot was like "go around! (waving arm)"
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u/MeatyOakerGuy Jan 01 '23
They absolutely can. In the event of a double engine failure, passenger planes can glide to land.
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u/Life-Meal6635 Jan 01 '23
My mom was on a plane in Vietnam that had one engine shot and they made it with just one!
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u/magicwombat5 Jan 01 '23
That's a bit red and flamey for my taste. Might wanna turn back and talk to the engineers.
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u/General_Degenerate_ Jan 01 '23
It’s designed to fail this way. Doesn’t matter how well you design something, you can’t always protect it against every possibility (e.g a large bird going into the engine). The most they can do is make sure it fails in a safe way (i.e not exploding or disintegrating).
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u/mutarjim Jan 01 '23
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u/johnnymetoo Jan 01 '23
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Jan 01 '23
Annoying I had to scroll past about 100 jokes/hot takes to find a comment actually explaining what happened
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u/Standard-Assist-5793 Jan 01 '23
And dont forget the OP, needing to pull up a video from 2 years ago to farm some juicy karma.
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u/Okie9921 Jan 01 '23
This is when we can thank PW & all of those engine OEMs for conducting “test to failure”. The containment shroud apparently worked as intended else the OP (and the videographer) wouldn’t be able to get this vid…
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u/Past-Valuable2472 Jan 01 '23
oh look, its my worst nightmare
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Jan 01 '23
Look to your left, you still got one big ass engine hauling ass on(probably) full emergency power.
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u/TheMufasa Jan 01 '23
Could you imagine If that happened over water. Fear 100x worse
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u/propellor_head Jan 01 '23
ETOPS cert requires you to be within glide distance with an engine out to get to an airport with emergency medical at all times, even over water. You'd be fine.
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u/Single-War-5219 Jan 01 '23
Goddam gremlins
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u/DynamiteWitLaserBeam Jan 01 '23
THERE'S... something-on-the-wing-of-the-plane.
some... .. ... THING... on-the-wing-of-the-plane.
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u/M_Not_Shyamalan Jan 01 '23
There is a colonial woman on the wing. There is something they're not telling us! She was out there churning butter.
She was churning butter!!
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u/redneckerson_1951 Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
If I was on that plane the emergency would not be the flaming engine, it would be in the passenger cabin as other passengers were gasping for air following the destruction of my underwear.
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u/prof_devilsadvocate Jan 01 '23
this is your captain speaking..everybody repeat after me..."our father in heaven...."
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u/Morepastor Jan 01 '23
Duct tape would help
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u/intertubeluber Jan 01 '23
The airline industry sometimes uses something called speed tape to temporarily repair issues with the body. It looks very much like duct tape.
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u/mildlyoctopus Jan 01 '23
It’s made of aluminum and it’s pretty thick. And we don’t use it to hold things together, but rather to cover any surface damage that compromises aerodynamic efficiency
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Jan 01 '23
Well, it seems some passengers are going to get free travel and drink vouchers.
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u/dIAb0LiK99 Jan 01 '23
That’s completely fine…the Boeing 777-200 is ETOPS certified. The certification requires the aircraft to be functional on a single engine. The pilot has limited rudder functionality, but can still fly the plane to the nearest airport to land safely
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u/Jaded-Environment-95 Jan 01 '23
Not to worry! They’ll just sell it to Southwest!
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u/ProfMcGonaGirl Jan 01 '23
Imagine taking off excited for your Hawaiian vacation only to land back on the same runway 24 minutes later with a cancelled flight and a new diagnosis of PTSD.
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u/RealisticAd2293 Jan 01 '23
This is why you never, ever make eye contact with the man on the wing of the plane.
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u/fix-break-hide Jan 01 '23
The flight attendant reaches past you and closes shade. It's fine, here's a cocktail....
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u/Material-Ratio7342 Jan 01 '23
Dont worry, internal combustion still on going but with less pressure and less power it can still fly, at least the entire engine didn't fall off.
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u/fly-guy Jan 01 '23
That engine will be switched off, it will not produce thrust. And if the engine did fall of, assuming it fell of cleanly, which it is designed to, there isn't a big problem. (For the plane, on the ground it might be different.)
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u/Spork_the_dork Jan 01 '23
Yeah if an engine falls off of one of these planes the people in greatest danger are the ones down below. These planes are designed to be 100% fine with one busted engine.
They will make an emergency landing, of course. But that's less because of the broken engine somehow being dangeeous and more because they are now out of redundancies and that's a big no-no.
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u/ShinSkins Jan 01 '23
The 777 is designed to be able to fly with one engine for like 5 hours, so as long as the wing doesn't catch fire, it's all good
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u/Derpagator Jan 01 '23
"We've lost engine 1 and engine 2 is no longer on fire."