Listen as Ex-Navy Pilot Tammie Joe Shults calmly lands SW 737 with exploded engine

One of the first lessons i recieved in the air was how to hold her in a glide of sorts if the engine quit, it's time to use a little math and figure out how much time and distance you have roughly before she comes back to earth on a dead engine. It isnt the chinese fire drill end of life we are all gonna die type problem on multi engine planes. Lose one or two or whatever as long you have one left until it overheats you still have some options. Even if the whole thing died and you are now a gliding brick falling at a certain rate of distance and altitude lost to gravity, you still have options.

The 737 type is a wonderful plane as it has a slightly broad wing where it counts it gives you a certain amount of time in lift to pick a spot to put it down.

The one thing that does upset me is watching all the local banks run the flag at half staff due to the death of this major banking VP due to trauma of being sucked out the window. She did actually suffer bad trauma forces to her pelvic area from the seatbelt she was wearing. Now if you imagine the decompression forces at 31600 feet (Not to mention the air temps being below freezing at cruise) pulling a seat belted person through the window nature is something else.

If anyone needed good news, all the CFM engines of that particular type is ordered to be inspected, best with ultrasound on each of those blades which are usually titanium alloy. If the ultrasound reveals a crack inside the structure of one or more of those blades then the engine can be swapped out. This engine that exploded had 40000 cycles (Flights) on it and it was overhauled about 25% cycles ago. around 16000 flights ago.

The other issue was the descent required by the decompression. It was stated that it took 5 minutes to get from 31600 to 10000 (10K being the usual limit of atmosphere that contains enough oxygen at a adequate pressure for humans to breathe and not suffer damage in mind and body for a while) That's a descent rate of 4500 feet per minute. I don't know about you but if the cabin lost pressure all those souls have about a minute or so to get the oxygen on pronto before they go unconsious. And Im not familiar with how much LOX carried aboard a 737 feeding and supporting 110 souls or whatever number on that plane for 5 minutes. (A huge amount i imagine) I would want to get from 31 to 10 as fast as that thing will do it. Maybe 9000 feet per minute or greater on down.

Air traffic problems below near Philly might have required a longer descent among other problems.

Anyway, that's a few dinner plates on the table for food of thought for those who are perhaps unfamiliar with what aircraft can do.

 

With the incidents they’ve been involved in over the past few years,Southwest better be prepared for an extensive review of their maintenance records on their fleet,as their aircraft build up a considerable amount of cycles,both on the airframes and the powerplants. And a lot of their flights have stage lengths on average of 500-600 miles.

 

It’s incidents like this that reinforces the notion that there is no substitute for a pilot in the seat.

In this age where technology is on the verge of self driving vehicles and pilot-less airplanes, it makes you stop and think,

 

The flags are at half star for former First Lady Barbara Bush.

 

Technically speaking it was their first fatality on board one of their aircraft. The first fatality involving one of their aircraft occurred back in 2005 when one of their planes overran the runway landing at Chicago Midway Airport during a snowstorm.
Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 - Wikipedia

 

As if they didn’t have enough problems.
Southwest Flight 957 makes emergency landing with broken window - CNN