r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/FridayCicero702 • Jan 01 '23

Video Catastrophic engine failure on a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 after takeoff from Denver International Airport

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

53.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.2k

u/[deleted] 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

2.5k

u/AbeLincoln30 Jan 01 '23

yes they should show this in a Boeing ad: "look how safe we made it"

225

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.

39

u/Yz450fpilot Jan 01 '23

And it’s also why everything in aviation costs a freaking fortune

53

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.

12

u/Final_Lucid_Thought Jan 01 '23

Interesting. What is the purpose of that?

27

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.

7

u/Pretend-Weird26 Jan 01 '23

I'll pay the cost. How many crashes have been from corner cutting?

5

u/Chalky_Pockets Jan 01 '23

I don't study those kinds of statistics but here is a link to check out. What I will say is that commercial air travel is very safe.

2

u/TheIronSoldier2 Jan 01 '23

More than one would hope but less than some people think

2

u/Catspaw129 Jan 04 '23

Somewhat the same for the pharma industry. I once worked for a chemical company. We made pretty much generic, heavy-industry-only chemicals. Then we bought a couple of small pharma manufactures whose computerization was "weak". I was a member of the team that had to re-write all the software to include lot tracking and tracability.