How often does a engine failure on a jet result in a successful landing?

popaviator

popaviator

Well-Known Member
I was thinking about this today and was wondering how many jet engine failures that resulted in a successful landing other pilots could recall? The one even that stands out in my mind is the Thomsonfly 757 bird ingestion on the right engine after takeoff.
 
Any engine failures anywhere, for any reason? Or are you talking occurrances in a particular phase of flight, such as takeoff/enroute/approach?
 
MikeD said:
Any engine failures anywhere, for any reason? Or are you talking occurrances in a particular phase of flight, such as takeoff/enroute/approach?
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Parameters for this aren't too strict. :) I'm looking for incidents where an engine was either shut down or failed on its own and the pilots landed successfully. I'm guessing that most of the accidents occur when the engine fails on takeoff or approach for obvious reasons. I'm pretty new to the turbine side of flying, so I was hoping to gather some insight as to how difficult it really is to land a jet in the real world after training and under pressure to make the runway.
 
Landing a Jet with OEI, its a lot easier than landing a prop OEI. Either way it's an extremely rare case when one doesn't make it back on one engine.

Capt. Sully lost both engines and made a successful "landing" one engine should be a walk in the park.
 
The closer it happens to V1 the more difficult it's going to be to fly the aircraft. You're at one of your highest power settings and at your slowest speed which gives you less control effectiveness. In the CRJ200, in the sim, it's really not that incredibly difficult. Use lots of rudder and plan on it not climbing very well. Like I said... this is sim experience only. I'm not pretending to be an expert.

I could see if you were flying a single pilot jet though things could get a little hairy. The non-flying crew member generally handles all of the checklist duties. All in all though the aircraft I fly will still fly with the autopilot on single engine so if George can maneuver it then there's no reason you shouldn't be able to land it no problem.

As for stats on this I don't have any. Like USMCmech said it's going to be way easier to count the times that this resulted in disaster rather than success. Especially when you're looking at transport category aircraft. In fact no examples come to mind of single-engine ops that resulted in a 121 aircraft accident.
 
popaviator said:
I was thinking about this today and was wondering how many jet engine failures that resulted in a successful landing other pilots could recall? The one even that stands out in my mind is the Thomsonfly 757 bird ingestion on the right engine after takeoff.
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Assuming you're talking about multi-engine jets I'd give it 4 - 9's. 99.99%
 
I don't have any official stats either. While failures may be rare in the 121 and 135 world, they do happen every year. Sometimes they happen on their own, sometimes the pilots do a precautionary shut down due to some system issue. Most of the stuff won't even make it into the news beyond a 30 second clip or a two paragraph write up on page 3 of the A section.

Unless it is something really catastrophic, an engine failure in a transport category plane will be very survivable. The engines have more power, there are multiple system redundancies and every time you go to SIM you are training for that sort of event.
 
I've had to shut down two engines (thankfully not at the same time) on the RJ. I'd guess out of our fleet of 50 airplanes doing 10 flights a day we have one to two shutdowns a month. So far none of them have ended in a crash.
 
I didn't die when I had the engine failure in the 1900 and I suck at flying so chances of survival are good!
 
bronco21016 said:
The closer it happens to V1 the more difficult it's going to be to fly the aircraft. You're at one of your highest power settings and at your slowest speed which gives you less control effectiveness. In the CRJ200, in the sim, it's really not that incredibly difficult. Use lots of rudder and plan on it not climbing very well. Like I said... this is sim experience only. I'm not pretending to be an expert.

I could see if you were flying a single pilot jet though things could get a little hairy. The non-flying crew member generally handles all of the checklist duties. All in all though the aircraft I fly will still fly with the autopilot on single engine so if George can maneuver it then there's no reason you shouldn't be able to land it no problem.

As for stats on this I don't have any. Like USMCmech said it's going to be way easier to count the times that this resulted in disaster rather than success. Especially when you're looking at transport category aircraft. In fact no examples come to mind of single-engine ops that resulted in a 121 aircraft accident.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123021742
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19710916-0

These are the only three that come to mind. in the case of the 737 and the USAF C-9 the wrong engine was shutdown or idled. In the case of the heavy C-5 the wrong engine was idled so they were down to 2/4. So ya pretty rare I'd say, and only due to stupid pilot tricks.
 
Lee D said:
Unless it is something really catastrophic, an engine failure in a transport category plane will be very survivable. The engines have more power, there are multiple system redundancies and every time you go to SIM you are training for that sort of event.
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This has been my experience. A precautionary shut down in cruise due to rising ITT and a "smoke like" smell in the cockpit about 50 short of TOD. Practically speaking, a total non event.
 
popaviator said:
I was thinking about this today and was wondering how many jet engine failures that resulted in a successful landing other pilots could recall? The one even that stands out in my mind is the Thomsonfly 757 bird ingestion on the right engine after takeoff.
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Haven't lost one yet in a jet, but as you can see from the video, that 757 climbed out uneventfully. It's still capable of 1000+ fpm with an engine out, so it's fine.
 
I was a pax on a 747 mid Atlantic when they shut down two engines. About 30 minutes later the crew was forced to shut down a 3rd engine. It was pretty scary because if we lost the 4th engine we'd never get down.
 
dasleben said:
Haven't lost one yet in a jet, but as you can see from the video, that 757 climbed out uneventfully. It's still capable of 1000+ fpm with an engine out, so it's fine.
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That's because the 757 is insane! :) Seems that way at least while riding in the back.

All in all, I'm betting a part 25(or is it 23?) airplane isn't as risky as a light twin. Barons, for example, don't have near enough tail. Can get silly in a hurry and it's not gonna be climbing at max gross. Some preflight planning on google maps on where to go if it happens right after takeoff isn't a bad idea.
 
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