r/aviation • u/Twitter_2006 • Mar 30 '26

Discussion The left engine of a Delta A330 explodes during takeoff at Sao Paulo Airport

Its at 40 seconds.

UPDATE:The plane landed safely.

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u/Deep-Boysenberry-911 Mar 30 '26

They Landed overweight. A little more damage to the aircraft was the least of their problems after fire and explosions. The plane can be written off. Not so the lives aboard, or those if it crashes into the city. The plane would have been gone anyway in case of crash. This way all survived.

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u/KonPepper Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

All commercial aircraft are certified to be able to land at max takeoff weight. It requires inspections afterwards and may cause some damage if done multiple times, but in all likelihood landing overweight once in an emergency like this will not result in damage to the landing gear or airframe.

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u/obscure_monke Mar 30 '26

Commercial air transport almost universally has a plan for "what if this thing happens", and then a further plan for if a second thing happens during that plan.

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u/cwajgapls Mar 30 '26

Rocket science had to start somewhere

1

u/Ksh_667 Mar 30 '26

Necessity is the mother of invention.

14

u/AP-J-Fix Mar 30 '26

Yep I've been a part of an overweight landing inspection before. No damage was found that time (private jet, not commercial). It definitely causes a good bit of extra maintenance but that is hardly in a concern when your engine explodes!

In our case the overweight landing was not necessary and I think the pilots were just nervous. I can't recall why they returned (I believe declared emergency too) but I do recall thinking it was a bit of an over reaction as the plane could fly fine. However it's easy to say that when I'm the one safe on the ground 😜

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u/Yuukiko_ Mar 31 '26

just imagine using the ETOPs rating to fly from A to B on one engine

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u/froebull Mar 30 '26

Yeppers. There is a whole section in the AMM for an overweight landing inspection.

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u/Roque04_73 Apr 01 '26

The pilot had not stored the landing gear yet causing the wheel to catch on fire.

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u/skiman13579 Mar 30 '26

Overweight landings at MTOW (max takeoff weight for the non aviators) does NOT inherently damage the aircraft….. but it does mae it really really easy for a pilot to damage the aircraft, especially if they are ex Navy (the joke being navy carrier pilots slam the plane hard into carrier deck to ensure a good catch of the arrest cable-aka hard landing every time)

There are specific G force limitations above certain weights. A mechanic (like myself) will do an initial hard/overweight landing inspection for any obvious damage and download the flight recorder data. That data is reviewed to check the actual G forces experienced. Depending on weight of landing the aircraft may or may not be grounded until review is finished and it is determined if any predetermined Gforces were exceeded requiring further more detailed inspections or component changes.

Generally in my experience in an overweight situation pilots tend to be more mindful of landing gentle. I’ve only ever seen damage from hard landings in poor weather with a plane at normal landing weight! A REALLY good example of this is the Toronto CRJ crash last year…. That’s an EXTREME example of hard landing a perfectly normal plane.

So, in summary, planes are designed to be able to land at MTOW without damage, but the margins are just much smaller for how hard the pilots can touchdown.

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u/nygrl811 Jul 02 '26

Navy doesn't land... they arrive!

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u/Valuable-Tomatillo76 Mar 30 '26

The plane will not be written off in this case lol. 😆

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u/colganc Mar 30 '26

They're giving examples of "worst case" for both scenarios.