OT - Another plane crash...

[jsmarcus]

As some of you already know, there has been another plane crash in Queens NY. Eyewitnesses are reporting so far that there was an explosion in the air. Another witness said he saw 2 fighter jets in the vicinity.

Due to the Veteran's Day holiday, schools are closed in the area. There is no indication as of now of foul play. New York is again on lockdown.

Apparently, there are 2 crash sites, the airplane's engine hit a gas station, and the plane is in another area. More will follow as I learn more.

*UPDATE* So far, they do not suspect terrorism. Geez, this is less than an hour from here. It's like 9/11 all over again. There are people in my office that are hysterical. Here's what we know so far:

American Airlines Flight 587 crashes on takeoff in NYC borough of Queens
The flight, an Airbus A300, left JFK airport for Dominican Republic
246 passengers, 9 crew on board
Senior administration official: Initial indications of explosion, source unknown
The Pentagon said surveillance flights in the area; no unusual activity reported

www.cnn.com

[davis911s]

Please keep this bulletin updated. I am not near a TV so no CNN, I'd like to know what the hell is up, I hope this is NOT true or not related to more bad news.

Shawn

[AMG Hammer]

A pilot claimed to see smoke trailing from one of the engines on take off.

Another witness claims he watched an engine fall off just before the crash.

[Pillow]

This "seems" to be mechanical in nature where the engine fell off one way and the plane crashed further down the way in Queens.

... Sounds oddball to me though. I have never heard of an engine falling off a plane. That engine should hold on for an unbelievable amount of force. On watching a Boeing demonstration on PBS a year ago and saw that the planes wings can almost bend 40-45 degrees before snapping, unreal to watch especially when they do finally snap.

... Patiently waiting to hear the root cause...

[Planter91C2]

uh oh, i just heard a news interview where they speculated that a PELICAN may have been hit and lodged in the engine causing the crash..

honest, i just heard it on CNN

a PELICAN.........

[GIBSON]

Sounds like the engine actually landed on a boat parked in a driveway. Took out the boat, obviously, and the garage.
The airplane is an Airbus 300. Engines have fallen off airplanes before, in 1979 or so an engine fell off a DC-10 out of Chicago.
It prompted a review of engine mounts and all DC-10's were
retrofitted if memory serves.
In Europe they call the Airbus the Scarebus. Maybe with good reason. Let's hope loss of life on the ground is somehow minimal.

Bruce Herrmann

[emcon5]

What really irritates me is the news coverage. My TV is my alarm clock, so at 6:30 Pacific time, 15 minutes after the crash, CNN comes on. For the next half hour, there was no new information. This of course didn't stop them (and every other station) to cover the crash, and only the crash. They said nothing, at great length. For davis911s, here is what you missed.

"Here we have a live picture from WCBS in New York, where you can clearly see smoke. We cut now to some nitwit who lives in the general area of the wreck: "I heard a noise like a jet going over, then I saw smoke". Thanks Bob, back to the studio. Ok, lets cut back to the live picture from where you can clearly see the smoke. My that smoke certainly is smoky. Now to a guy who says he used to fly for some airline that has nothing to do with today's events. Dave: "well, sometimes planes crash" Thanks Dave, we have to take a commercial break now, but we will be back to the live feed of the smoke, after this important message about feminine hygene"

Repeat, Ad Nausium,

Maybe if we are lucky, they will find the family of one of the victims. It is always so revealing when they stick a camera in some newly widowed woman's face and ask the insightfull question "How do you feel?"

Makes me want to puke.

Tom

[pwd72s]

In "THE ESSES", the early 911S registry newsletter, there were several pieces published on counterfeit fasteners (low grade posing as higher grade) flooding the market. The pieces started with an engine tech complaining of counterfeit Porsche Rod bolts. Ended with a letter from a fastener company executive saying the counterfeits are out there in ever increasing numbers, and yes, the airline industry as well. Something to think about as you're waiting for takeoff on that runway, eh? Not saying this is the cause of today's crash, nobody seems to know yet.

[Rollins]

I don't think this is a terrorist attack. After 9/11 people have a good reason to suspect that initially, but there are no strong indications that this is the case. The Media is to blame for all the paranoia that is around us. They are to blame for all the scares. Back in World War 2 they had a saying. Loose lips equal dead troops. The media says too much. The suggestion that an aircraft (which lost an engine at that!) suffered an explosion in air is really not a good indicator. Look at what you're dealing with, jet engines with an aircraft full of fuel. Also, a hijacker could not make an engine fall of in flight, you can't jettison them. The only real possibility I could think of is something that happened on the ground, but even so I can't imagine that any one indivual, or even a couple of them, could loosen the hold on the engine un-noticed.

[Pillow]

Tom, that was great! LOL

So true and so sad about the media.

[Sunroof]

.................thats, "Loose lips, sink ships"............

Birds, I betcha. It has always been a problem when planes were taking off toward the bay. I believe several bird rookeries and sanctuaries prevail out in the marshes. If its true about birds getting sucked in then the turbine blades go and the ultimate fire and vibration could shake an engine loose. But, then again how many planes have we heard about have gone down from Kennedy from bird induction?!

Bob

[Wayne 962]

Hmmm, Interesting. In reality, jet engines are indeed designed to break off of the plane upon impact. I can't recall the exact reason, but I think it's meant to leave them behind if they are on fire.

In college we did what was known as a "limit-analysis" on air plane engines (actually this difficult question was on the final). The engines indeed are attached using fasteners that are designed to break-off when exposed to certain torque/forces. These are supposed to be inspected often.

Pieces of airplanes fall off frequently from LAX. Last year, we had an engine cowling fall on Dockwiler beach from a jet that was taking off.

This is an unfortunate occurance. Did anyone see 20/20 last week, where they 'proved' that airlines don't x-ray checked baggage on flights? They put x-ray detectors in the luggage, and then checked them. All 3 (on different flights) read no exposure to x-rays.

I thought that all luggage was x-rayed when you checked it (I still can't believe it's not), but they were saying that the airlines are NOT required to do this, and many don't. UNBELIEVABLE! I was willing to fly up until I saw this story. I wish I had a link to back up this info...

-Wayne

[Mike Miller]

Yes, the engines are designed to sheer off if the vibration becomes to much for the wing to handle. If more than just a little amount of the blades become more than just damaged, the vibration could become significant, particularly if the jet was at almost max power. Which it probably was because of the full load and lots of fuel.

[Wayne 962]

This was a new plane though - it's unlikely that it would suffer from fatigue from age. And the engines are designed to suck birds. I've seen some windshield tests (pretty amazing), where they throw frozen turkeys into them at 200 mph!

All I can say that this makes a bad situation worse for the airline and travel industry.

-Wayne

[jsmarcus]

Yup, and for those of us that work in the travel industry.

I work for Cendant, the parent company for Howard Johnson, Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Knights Inn, Villager, Amerihost, Travelodge and Wingate hotels. We also have Avis. As you can imagine, our revenues have dropped considerably. On top of this, we franchise only, so as the hotels make less, so do we!

And things are just looking up, too, our stock is, well, was climbing slowly back up and now we've take nanother hit today.....

[beepbeep]

""I have never heard of an engine falling off a plane""

It happened plenty of times...fr example, DC10 lost one 79' @ O'Hare airport due to bad maintenance routines (they used lift-truck to raise engines), so main engine spar stress-cracked and finally gave up.


Airbus-Scarebus??? Airbus has procentually lower amount of failures than Boeing, and many accidents were pilot-induced due to higher complexity of Airbus-cockpit vs. Boeing cockpit.

A300 is pretty dated design, it's a first Airbus comercial aircraft.

Pretty weird that accident like this happened in New York and that plane crashed in populated area, but it's perfectly possible and probably true...

They found both CVR and FDR and they will give definitive answers very soon...


Aircrafts do fall down sometimes....

[patalive]

Yeah, BeepBeep is correct - during the first several years when the DC-10 were new late 70s' early 80s, engines on three, four or five (can't remember) fell off due to improper maintenance. As I recall, it had something to do with the order of disassebly/assembly - - engine, connected to the nacelle, connected to the wing. I think the maintenance guys were leaving the engine attached to the nacelle and simply removing the engine and nacelle as one unit. At that time, my brother was a co-pilot for United flying the 10s.
Chuck

[nostatic]

The CVR has been recovered. There are reports the pilot dumped fuel, which would indicate that they knew there was a problem. But, there weren't any reports of radio transmissions...maybe they were too busy.

[Adam]

I'm on a day off and just woken up to this terrible news. A truly horrible way to start the day. Like millions of people around the world, the first conclusion I reached was "Terrorists". It's sad how it's the first reaction we all have.

I remember a vivid story about an air disaster during the early 70s. There was a well known accident over South-Eastern Melbourne in which a large helicopter collided with a cargo aircraft.

Wreckage was strewn over a vast area. One of the engines from the Cargo Plane landed in my Grandmother's backyard, nearly totally destroying the place and my Father's 1965 Lincoln was covered in what looked like oil droplets. The newspapers all came around to photograph the disaster and my Grandmother's house ended up front page material. Later, my Father was very shaken when he made the chilling realization that his car wasn't covered in oil, but blood.

God bless those poor souls who lost their lives, but spare a thought for those on the ground too.