How far can an airline plane fly on one engine?
ETOPS which stands for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards is an international rating for the maximum length of time an aircraft is certified to fly with one of its engines operating.
In 2003, and at a time that rating was 180 minutes, the captain of a United Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Auckland to Los Angeles had to shut down an engine, after being alerted to a problem of low oil and high temperature in that particular engine.
By that time, there was no turning back as the flight was more than halfway past the midpoint to Hawaii and a decision was made to land at Hawaii as it was within the aircrafts ETOPs range. The aircraft, aided by headwinds was able to land safely on one engine at Hawaii’s Kona Airport, after flying 192 minutes on a single engine – setting a new record for operating with a single engine in emergency conditions.
It was around that time too, that manufacturers of aircraft, concerned that an ETOPS rating of 180 minutes wasn’t sufficient for airlines looking to fly long haul over long stretches of the ocean, were looking at ways to prove that their twin-engine aircraft were capable of operating safely on one engine for much longer.
In October of 2003, a Boeing 777-300ER on a 13-hour test flight from Seattle to Taipei flew for over five hours on one engine. At the time the aircraft was undergoing trials for a revised ETOPS rating that would allow it to operate for 330 minutes on a single engine. After the crew shut down one of the two General Electric GE90-115B engines the aircraft continued to Taipei and landed safely. At the time Boeing was predicting the 777-300ER testing program would include some 220 hours of ETOPS flying.
Current title holder for the aircraft with the longest ETOPS rating is the Airbus 350-900, certified to fly for up to 370 minutes on one engine. That gives it a maximum diversion distance up to 2500 nautical miles, or 4630 kilometres. There are no scheduled airline flights that take an aircraft further than that from an airport that the aircraft could divert to in an emergency, and therefore the A350-900 can operate on any air route.
Thankfully, engine failure on a twin-engine jet aircraft is very uncommon – virtually a one-in-a-million even and that’s about the number of flights a passenger must take to experience an engine failure on a twin-engine aircraft. That puts it at about 25 such events occurring right across the commercial aviation industry per year. It's so rare that the most likely place a pilot will experience an engine failure is at the controls of a flight simulator, and that's one of the training procedures a pilot will regularly undergo.
Source: External
|
|
|
|
