Calling Higgins...
 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/terrifying-close-call-plane-skids-132514328.html

When I first looked at this pictures, I thought maybe the plane just skidded off the end of the runway. But those pics from an aerial view -- :eek:

Jeff can’t respond since he is changing into his swim trunks so he can wade into the sea to fetch the ejected engine.

looks like the port engine provided the necessary braking.

It will be interesting to see how they get that aircraft out of that position.:confused:

Ah yes, the good old days. I wish I could go on this one, it looks like fun. Alas, I retired last June. The young bucks are going to have to figure this one out.

It's probably pretty minimal damage, really. Landing gear, engines, struts, re-skin part of the bottom, replace a bunch of smashed up fiberglass panels and structure on the wing to body fairing, etc. Our AOG folks will have this thing flying in less than a month.

Recovery looks like the most challenging aspect of this one. That would be the fun part for me; the rest would be pretty routine.

I have a 'come-along,' if they need one.

We might need to pool all of ours together. Thank god they did this to one of our little airplanes. If it were a 747, we might need a winch or something.

There's already a long thread in PPRuNe.

Jeff,

I know you aren't there, don't have the exact specifics, but where would you start? This stuff really interests me. There is nothing more I enjoyed than figuring out maintenance issues and then going to fly the formerly downed aircraft.

I am assuming (ass out of you and me) that yo make the plane as light as possible (defuel/cargo out/interior out, etc.) and then try and lift the rear, put stuff under the plane, lift again, remove engines, more stuff under the plane then...what!?!

I am assuming the gear is gone. Starboard engine is buried as well.

"Stuff", btw, is a proprietary substance I just created.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1516051810.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1516051810.jpg

Well one engine if off already, that will lighten the load.

It does look like a real puzzle on how to pull it up the hill and not bend it in half. It is for sure something I would like to watch other people do.

We would not allow personnel to enter that aircraft, so any disassembly to lighten it would be out. We would sure like to de-fuel it, but it would be very difficult to do so in that position. The fuel, at its allowable landing weight, is probably low enough to be below all of the drains with it in that attitude.

Boy, a real head-scratcher here. We would probably start by engaging local civil engineers to let us know what we are dealing with as far as the ground underneath it. How stable is it? What kind of equipment can we put on it? How much additional load can we apply to that equipment without winding up in the drink? How close can we get on the flat ground above, and what kind of loads can we put on it? How about the tarmac - can we anchor into it to hold down some kind of cantilevered apparatus to lift and drag it? Stuff like that.

Once we have an idea from them as to where we can lift and drag from, we engage our structures and stress guys. We have designated lifting and jacking points, but they are meant to take vertical loads on a more or less level aircraft. Once we apply loads to them at what appears to be 45 degrees or more off vertical, we have to ask our stress guys just what we can do.

Once we have that information, it becomes my job to figure out how to fill the gap between where we can put what kind of equipment and where we can grab the aircraft. That might entail some manner of overhead basket sling arrangement, some shoring from below, a combination of the two, or who knows. If you just "can't get there from here", they might have to drag it down to the water and onto a barge.

This would be a fun one. This is the kind of stuff I miss. We can get really creative on this kind of recovery.

Soooo....., salvage title on that bich now, right? :)

Trailing throttle snap-oversteer. I knew it.

Are there helicopters powerful enough in the world to lift that thing w a sling? Maybe 2 of them, one on each end? But if they were big enough to lift it they probably could not be that close together.

Just thinking out loud.

This sounds like a euphemism for "money's no object!" :)

Good tires...

Aw cmon, someone had to say it.

Is there any way to determine whether there's enough structural damage to make recovery a non starter from an economic perspective?

Right you are, with a mid-engine design. The engines should be in the rear.

These things really are a lot like our cars when we start talking money, recovery costs, repair costs, and stuff like that. The insurance company pretty much has the last say. If the recovery/repair bill exceeds the value of the airplane, it won't get repaired. They will part it out, just like a car. Obviously it does need to be removed, but if they are not going to try to repair it, that opens up a lot more options. A lot of the valuable parts are already damaged, though, so there might be little money in it, no matter how many Craigslist ads they run.

I do remember one repair that exceeded the value of the aircraft. The carrier decided to do it anyway, simply because the next delivery slot for a replacement was too far out to meet their requirements. Sometimes their route and schedule commitments overrule, and they pay the difference after the insurance company totals it.

So, yeah, any of you that are in the market for a salvage titled 737, um - "buyer beware". They'll wash the title through a few third world countries, and it will show up on "Bring a Trailer" for cheap. Probably with "freshly rebuilt" engines from Jet Engine Meister...

That's funny. :D

Start up the left engine and put it in reverse.

'Cause that worked out really well in Ferris Bueller's, right?

I think that one's going to be one to watch. It's very unlikely they'll be able to lift that thing back up onto the runway. I guess you're looking at at least 100,000 pounds there, perhaps even more once you figure the baggage weight into it. A 300 ton crane might be able to lift a third of that, once you factor in where it would have to set up. There are bigger cranes, but once you get above 300 tons, you're into cranes that you would have to assemble on site. I still don't think you'd get there... unless, of course, you took everything out in pieces.

Barge-mounted cranes can lift quite a bit more, although you'd have to do some dredging to get one in there.

Maybe some documentary crew will film the recovery and we will get to watch it on television some day.

Russian MI 26 and a few big ass straps and pluck that baby right out of there. :D

Heard this evening cranes are being brought in to lift it out. Probably will use a giant diaper as a sling so all the s*** doesn’t fall out the bottom.

Jeff, retirement is overrated and what’s a few months in beautiful Turkey?

Jeff what's the scrap value of a totaled jet? Can the structural materials be recycled? Every time I see that picture of the aircraft graveyard I think of all of that aluminum etc just sitting there.

Figure out a way to get three of them hooked up all at once and you'd have a 50:50 chance. I wouldn't want to be within a half mile of that fiasco...

If anybody has a link to photos of the recovery attempt, please post it here. I've looked around a little and haven't seen anything yet. Probably too soon, who knows...

As I was reading through your post, I wondered about taking to a barge instead of lifting. I also really enjoy that type of stuff.

We installed a Nuclear medicine camera at a college on the second floor. Elevator is rated at 2,500 lbs, but the gantry weighs 6,400 lbs. Had to call in a rigging company to lift it into a window. In the foreground you can see the white gantry with plastic packaging wrapped around the detectors. The blue and yellow devices are the shipping brackets. That white cart with vertical thingys is a set of collimators that get switched out depending on the scan type. That set weighs about 600 lbs and mates to the detectors and rolls into place.

Site Diagnostic Imaging Managers know this stuff, but facilites and construction guys are shocked to hear the weight involved. A CT scanner weighs in at about 3,000 lbs, but MRI can be 13,00 to 24,000 lbs!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1516119476.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1516119587.jpg

That's amazing, Don.

My problem solving skills would have been to install it on the first floor.

Magnets are heavy, go figure

Some are much heavier than others....

Especially the ones that make all the hydrogen atoms in your body spin the same direction.

I was referring to the variations in machine design. Field strengths vary, the type of magnets vary... but you know all that. It's fun to install machines like that, because few hospitals were well designed with easy access in mind and hospital administrators always want to put things in the worst possible place.

JR

So, was Richard Hammond flying and will this be on The Grand Tour also?

Put some balloons underneath and let it slide and float on the water... Hahahaha

Like a car, the real value is in the components that make it operate, like the control surfaces, actuators, and tracks, hydraulic systems components, electrical components, etc. All of the wear items. The airline would likely keep all of that as spares for the rest of their fleet. The structure is mainly 7075 aluminum, plus a fair amount of titanium in some of the heavily stressed beams and such, so even all of that has a fair amount of scrap value as just raw material.

We actually use that aircraft graveyard as kind of our own giant "pick'n'pull" wrecking yard. Much of the time we wind up repairing out of production aircraft, and our only source for parts is that graveyard. When the 747 changed wings on the -8 variant, for example, we wound up down there pulling upper and lower outboard wing skins for a -400 repair in South Africa, because that version was out of production. No one stocks those kinds of parts, not even us.

You'll have to watch an ad, but there is video of the lift here:

Passenger plane lifted away from cliff edge after Turkey runway incident

Smallest 747-800 ive ever seen!



Looked to be in remarkably good shape considering the circumstance. What’s Higgins think, repairable?

I once got on a plane in Europe where there was a 12 to 18 inch deep dent right before the left horizontal stabilizer. Ugly.

Looked like someone backing up the plane had caught it on a doorway and ripped the fin off.
And then someone else stuck a new fin on and certified the tube to go.

No problems with the flight actually. I forgot the altitude but it was a regional thing and probably not above oxygen even.

It looks like it all worked out. They were able to approach close enough with the big boom cranes without having to do anything extraordinary with the underlying footing. Easy peasy.

Next step is a survey team to assess damage. From there, a repair estimate will be offered, and it's then up to the airline and their insurance carrier to determine whether or not it will be repaired. You never know...

I've been in on the repair of far worse. It might look bad, what with the one engine sheared from its mounts and all of that. The thing is, though, it's supposed to do that to mitigate damage to the strut and attendant structure. We provide shear pins that are meant to let go so that kind of thing just tears off. Same with the gear, it can get pretty beat up, to torn completely off, and everything that it hangs from is pretty "easily" (relatively) replaceable. They'll fix it and have it flying in no time.

I wouldn't want to be the guy that put the straps in place.
Guess they could secure the plane from sliding from the tail section, still.

They did place the crains well back from the edge.
Would have thought it was a heavy lift at or near full extension.

Nice job.

Cheers Richard