Ingested into an aircraft engine
 

Man, what a terrible way to go. Fire and drowning are pretty bad. Those used to be my biggest fears (for mechanisms of death). This one sounds pretty awful, too. Right up there with wood chipper. Godspeed.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ntsb-airline-worker-pulled-engine-160016317.html

Sucks....

Nothing new here...

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Maybe wrap some chicken wire around the intake?

Injested...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1672774988.jpg

It would be a fast death. But terrifying as you are getting sucked in.

There have been many prop strikes that cut people up but left a corpse to bury.

Spray painted down the side of the aircraft.

Too soon. :)

I have started small prop planes probably at least 1000 times since I started flying in the 90's. 3/4 of them at least were starting my Rotax powered Minimax ultralight. Never had an issue but pretty scary when one thinks about what could happen slipping on ice or if throttle was left wide open.

I have always been most nervous when on the rare occasion I have started a stranger's plane with a dead battery who I did not know at some airport or fly-in event. I always make sure to discuss procedure with said pilot and always give prop a good yank first to make sure pilot has brakes applied before I start spinning the blade.

I lost a good friend that way, back when I was in the Navy. Stowing a power cable during flight ops. He must not have heard the S-3 Viking he walked in front of that was at full power. In he went. Tragic

As a former helicopter pilot, ground operations while spinning, ship or land, always had me hyper aware, especially at night.

There was no threat of getting sucked into my intakes, but the two Cuisinart blades spinning above me and behind me are the real deal.

The flight deck environment where SkyT worked for a bit scared the f out of me: I never landed on an aircraft carrier at night, thank god...daytime was Jurassic Park.

Is the engine a total write off in this situation?

When my uncle was stationed at Ardmore Army Airfield in Oklahoma during WWII, he somehow survived a prop strike while working on the flight line. He was in a coma for a few months but recovered. His face was always kind of droopy on one side like he had a stroke or something. He lived to a ripe old age of 82.

When I first began my career back in the early '80's, I was out on the flight line when a guy wheeling a rollaway tool box walked behind a 747 doing an engine run up. How on earth he made it through all of the layers of safety protocols was anyone's guess. They didn't find much of him. His rollaway reportedly achieved a few hundred feet altitude when it deflected off the blast fence.

I'd seen that clip before, but the only included explanation was "he got sucked into the engine, came out the other end, and was fine." As you can imagine, I was VERY confused how he managed to get past all of the little blades whirling around to get out the other end. Hearing the explanation that he got stuck before he was shredded is surprising but makes a lot more sense. That must have been terrifying, and waiting for 3 mins for the motor to spin down.

Absolutely tragic. To try to find any positive from it, I have to assume that he didn't have time to really understand or anticipate what was happening or about to happen.

How high is the risk of being struck by a spinning rotor blade?

I was a Final Checker in my Hornet gun squadron. Night ops on the flight deck of a carrier were my favorite (Yeah,maybe I'm a little strange...:cool:). But the adrenaline rush, and the constant need to be 100% aware of your immediate surroundings really kept the blood flowing. The steamier the cats were, the better!

Randy

I've always wondered that myself. In the movies, everyone is always ducking/crouching when they walk out from under a helo's blades, but it always looks like the blades are several feet away from them, high enough that walking upright wouldn't be an issue.

"What's Red and Green and goes 100 mph?"

A frog in a blender.

Would be a quick way to go.

Even if the blades are high enough so one could remain fully erect I think for the majority of people the natural instinct would be to duck.

Absolutely! Having a 20' "sword" whipping past your head would be pretty scary. But I assume it's gotta be a thing because it's almost universal. I guess the President may not do it when walking to/from Marine 1. I'm not sure. I don't know that I've ever seen a Pres board it on video, and I think those things are big/tall.

Why do we duck when it's raining?

I don't remember the rotors moving when the POTUS is walking under them. Maybe this is a policy.

The vanes can take a whole frozen turkey without damage.

Negative! While the engine may continue to operate (sub-standard, at best), there is definitely damage done to the vanes, and other parts, inside the engine.

sorry...had the wrong video. At 1:45 for the bird.

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That's just terrifying. It almost looks like a Looney Tunes sequence in the way that it just sucked him up. I wonder if they Article 15'd the guy.

Wow.

Two risks, that are separate: main and tail rotor.

The issue with the main rotors on most helicopters is control authority in pitch, even on the ground, which is why no one ever enters the rotor arc from the front of the aircraft while spinning, always from left or right. The disc can get to five feet on the H-60 forward.

There have been some horrific accidents on small ships involving the main rotor.

Tail rotor pretty self explanatory.

Ha. Now you reminded me about the Thanksgiving episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

^^^ Smoked and sliced turkey is the best.

Is a tail rotor strong enough to "suck" you in like a jet intake?

We had an airman back into a C2 prop while it was warming up during night OPs. With all of the launch and recovery noise and movement he didn’t hear it and obviously had a lapse in awareness. Nothing much left above the waist. Would have been so quick, immediate lights out. I had buddies in Crash and Salvage that had to do the FOD walk down after that and I had an outboard antenna right off the catwalk that I had to wash off. They parked and roped off the C2 in the hangar Bay until we got back in port. Couldn’t touch it until the investigation was completed.

Five!? Holy moly. At idle? Forgive but I know nothing of helo ops.

"Swivel head" was the term we used. If your head wasn't constantly in motion, constantly scanning the area 360 degrees around you, you were just an accident waiting to happen. There was no room for complacency on the flight deck, and mistakes were very costly!

That's a nice video, but having worked in the industry, around jet engines for 20 years, I've seen my fair share (up close and personal) of what a real bird ingestion can do to an engine.

Yep, tail is obvious. Thanks for the explanation on the main. I'd always wondered. This makes sense. I don't normally think about the rotors being anything other than parallel to the helicopter.

you would think..
but many a crewmember has tackled folks who ..
jump out before being cleared and go towards the rear...

saw same when a CMS jump out ..
before the shirts cleared us..
wham ..down he went..
then the Airboss had a piece of his a$$$..
something he hadn't experienced in years for sure..



Rika

Interesting tidbit, Flat: Modern helos do not idle in terms of rotor speed...the main rotor spins at the same RPM when the helicopter is on the ground or in the air when the engines are engaged.

The term is Nr. When the pilot increases collective (essentially the gas pedal) to go fly, the Nr remains constant throughout the flight - at least I always hoped so:cool:

In the Navy H-60 the Nr is 258 RPM.

Nr below the constant RPM is called "drooping". Drooping is bad.

The only time the Nr changes is on shutdown, at least in the Navy. I can see the shutdown checklist as I type:D