One of the videos appears to show a repeating flash at/near the exhaust of the middle engine. That could be a compressor stall and if so, could be because of FOD from the left engine.
It's a trijet. #2 is in the tail. Very possible debris gets in there. From the video also looks like a lot of smoke & heat at a minimum.
Sorry. Meant number 3 on the other wing. It flashes out the back briefly before the crash.
The number 1 engine is NOT on the runway. It happens to be sitting in the grass on the RIGHT side of the runway...that in itself is indicative of how catastrophic the failure was.
Where did you see that?
It is truly sad. People died. And the so-called news media still has to be first. Not that it matters that few are more ignorant of literally everything on earth. (I'd post a link to Don Henly's 'Dirty Laundry', but that song is too upbeat for this event.)
Latest news is at least 9 fatalities and several injured.
That is not strictly true.
Possibly up to 30 or 40 minutes to dump enough fuel to get down to their max landing weight.
I wish there was a way to download it. It's the only one I've seen where you can see the plane before it's tilting left. Definitely a lot of fire going on, and looks like it's not high enough to clear things, and while there was a very slight climb, it sure didn't last long. I'm guessing it was taken from the Ford plant.
The engine is to the left of the runway, actually just to the left of taxiway B. You can see taxiway lights and the bottom of the tower in the pic:
You’ve got the azimuth right, but is that not on the right side of the departure runway, next to taxiway A? You can see the runway behind it (between the engine and the control tower) and on the right side, partially cropped out, looks like an RVR transmissometer, which is located adjacent to the glideslope array on the west side of the runway.The engine is to the left of the runway, actually just to the left of taxiway B. You can see taxiway lights and the bottom of the tower in the pic:
And, if you draw a line from the tower through the canted part of the building in the background, you can see about where it was (left edge of the centerline of the ruler):
Wow I would have never thought of that.
And there’s video evidence that supports that theory.
I'm no expert on KSDF -- but for Runway 17R, my Google satellite view shows the windsock on the right side of the runway, not the left, and the picture (to me) shows the engine and the windsock on the same side of the runway. I think the taxiway in the foreground is Alpha, not Bravo.
OK, that does seem possible - was thinking I was seeing the different colors at the edge of the ramp east of B:
I’m wondering how did it depart the wing. Did it drop and roll? Or did it get launched over the wing? Where is the pylon?OK, that does seem possible - was thinking I was seeing the different colors at the edge of the ramp east of B:
But, I could also be convinced that that's the 1000-footers on the runway right behind the engine, and that the pic was taken from the west side fence of the airport. However, it seems like it's a lot closer to the tower than this view (from Street View along the west edge of the airport along the same azimuth I drew earlier):
View attachment 146914
I was also confused how the LEFT engine would end up on the RIGHT side of the runway... However, it would have been spinning very fast in the clockwise direction on the takeoff roll, and all of that rotating mass probably had plenty of angular momentum for it to roll to the right after it hit the runway.
Correct. The engine stopped just before the windcone/glideslope shelter between Runway 17R-35L and Taxiway A. So yeah, it crossed over the runway to get there. I designed most of the airfield pavements on that airfield, or worked on them in some fashion or another; I know that glideslope shelter well. Also for the path the aircraft took, it veered slightly left/east when it took off, as you can see the 3 light stations on the UPS building and 1 light station in front (north) of it. That'd be the approach lights for runway 35L and the extended centerline. So it was yawing that direction, it wasn't doing it in an extreme amount; the pilots did a good job with right rudder to compensate for the left engine out. Good thing, too, 'cause there's some scary things to hit if it had veered immediately left on lift-off.OK, that does seem possible - was thinking I was seeing the different colors at the edge of the ramp east of B:
But, I could also be convinced that that's the 1000-footers on the runway right behind the engine, and that the pic was taken from the west side fence of the airport. However, it seems like it's a lot closer to the tower than this view (from Street View along the west edge of the airport along the same azimuth I drew earlier):
View attachment 146914
I was also confused how the LEFT engine would end up on the RIGHT side of the runway... However, it would have been spinning very fast in the clockwise direction on the takeoff roll, and all of that rotating mass probably had plenty of angular momentum for it to roll to the right after it hit the runway.
After viewing the video of the aircraft crashing left wing first into the ground, I think the likelihood of finding the cause of the separation will be difficult. I hope I'm wrong.
Well, FWIW, on American 191 where the engine went up and over the wing after the rear pylon fitting failed, the engine ended up on the left side of the runway, and it caused other damage to the plane which led to the loss of control.
I dunno - They found the cause of the separation of the #1 engine on American 191 in 1979, and that one was maybe more challenging in a couple of ways: First, one of the things it crashed into was a storage hangar full of aircraft parts, so the investigators had to determine which parts were on the plane and which parts had been in the warehouse. Second, it was a more catastrophic crash as it had achieved some altitude before losing control and coming back down hard. The engine separation there had taken out some hydraulics, and the slats on the left wing retracted as a result. Also, at the time, the procedure was to fly at V2. AA191's V2 was 153 knots and the plane was at 165 initially, the slat retraction had raised the stall speed on the left wing to 159. As the FO (PF) raised the nose to the flight director to slow down to V2, the left wing stalled and they rolled to 115º and came crashing back down. This was covered in the ATP-CTP course I just took, and as a result of this accident they said that the current practice would be to keep the extra speed and fly at least V2+10.
Would the cause of seperation be hard to determine? The engine is sitting there on the runway. Go look at the engine mounts on that engine and it will tell you right away what seperated from where when the engine came off. The airplane may be gone but the engine itself will still reveal alot.
The "aircraft" side of the pylon failure may indeed be difficult to find/analyze, but they should have the other part - the engine/nacelle and whatever part of the pylon is still attached.
Well, part of the engine is on the runway. The fan appears to be AWOL, the fan shroud material perhaps shredded and ingested. A fan letting go can create an imbalance that could take an engine off, which means that what happened to the mounts proper (at either end of the pylon) is moot.
