zlacker

>>jnsaff+(OP)
Video of the crash, left (?) engine was already engulfed in flames while taking off

https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930

https://xcancel.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930

Edit: just the mp4 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1985845862409334784/pu/...

There is an incredible amount of ground damage! Just wow, this is very bad https://files.catbox.moe/3303ob.jpg

>>haunte+t
The damage on the ground is scary to look at. I think the only silver lining here is that it was "just" a sparser industrial area and there weren't any homes. I'm really curious about what the investigation will reveal in a few months. This doesn't look like a "regular" engine fire from a bird strike or so, you would normally expect the flames to come out the back and not over the wing. And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines, although flames on a wing is probably "really really bad" just by itself already. Too early to speculate about what happened though.

>>justsi+o2
> And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines

Flying with two engines and taking off without an engine in a loaded aircraft are two very different things. A lot more thrust is needed during takeoff than after.

>>Jtsumm+W4
Taking off with one engine inoperative (on a multi-engine aircraft, obviously - you aren't going to get anywhere with your only engine gone) is completely normal/within design parameters, albeit undesirable.

In fact, it being normal almost certainly contributed to the scale of this accident, since a single engine failure during the takeoff roll isn't considered enough of an emergency to reject the takeoff at high speed (past a certain speed, you only abort if the aircraft is literally unflyable - for everything else, you take the aircraft & emergency into the air and figure it out there). The crew wouldn't have had any way to know that one of their engines had not simply failed, but was straight-up gone with their wing on fire to boot.

>>filled+3m
> The crew wouldn't have had any way to know that one of their engines had not simply failed, but was straight-up gone with their wing on fire to boot.

I don't know about the MD-11 itself, but other aircraft from that time period have sensors to detect and report overheat and fire in various parts of the aircraft, including engines and wings.

>>Jtsumm+xm
I think too many of us are used to movies and TV (and Star-Trek-like scifi) that gives the incorrect view that extremely detailed information about the state of things is available.

The notification in the cockpit is likely nothing more than "ENG 2 FIRE" or similar. That could mean anything from "the fire is minor enough and we're at high enough speed that it's significantly safer to take off and then make an emergency landing", to "the engine has exploded and the wing is on fire and catastrophically damaged, so even though aborting takeoff now is dangerous and will likely cause us to overrun the runway, trying to continue would be worse".

It's a judgment call by the pilot to guess which of these is the case (or any possibility in between), and given the probabilities of various failure modes, I think it's fair for a pilot to assume it's something closer to the former than the latter.

>>kelnos+PW2
> I think too many of us are used to movies and TV (and Star-Trek-like scifi) that gives the incorrect view that extremely detailed information about the state of things is available.

What a strange comment. I never made any such statement or claim that a science-fantasy level of technology would exist in a decades old aircraft or any aircraft.

I was responding to someone who made the absurd claim that the pilots wouldn't be informed of a fire on the wing, when in fact they would be informed of that (which you seem to agree with). So what's Star Trek got to do with anything?