dutchroll

Yeah it gets up and goes. Can't sustain it for long though! Still, reducing to cruise power and leaned nicely I can get 3 hrs total out of the main tank and another 75 mins out of the aux. That's well past "need to stop for a stretch and rest break" in a plane without autopilot where you're ratcheted in (literally) by an aerobatic harness!

Are you talking about calibrating the K-factor in the instrument? Just a matter of doing several flights and keeping an accurate total of refuel amounts versus what the instrument says you burned. Then adding them up and doing a simple mathematical calculation will give you a new K-factor, which the instrument instructions should tell you how to change. The preset K-factors in the modern/reputable fuel flow instruments are pretty reasonable. Mine started within about 4-5 litres (on the pessimistic/conservative side). One re-cal swung it slightly the other way, then the latest re-cal has it close enough to spot on (within a couple of litres).

Mine was easy as I have an engine monitor with fuel flow. Also a horsepower reading (not essential but it's one of the nice things about a good engine monitor). For a given horsepower or % power the fuel flow is approximately the same at any altitude, so I did my fuel figures at about 4000 ft. All I have to do is factor in TAS/groundspeed on the day to figure out the range. My full power fuel flow at takeoff is 150 litres/hour. At Cruise 2 I can get about 45 litres/hr and at endurance I can get it down to 28 litres/hr with the power pulled right back. I climb at 3000+ ft/min so the difference in climb fuel burn between say 2000ft and 10,000ft isn't much! It might be a factor for other types though.

Interesting thread. One of the first things I did when I started flying my Experimental was check the fuel flows and level flight IAS at each standard power setting (full power, climb, nominal 2, cruise 1 leaned, cruise 2 leaned, and endurance) and tabulate those figures on my checklist card. I always calculate fuel burn for a distance flight. Always, even when I already know I'm going to fill it up, which is normally the case. The 45 mins is a holding fuel, but you also need to know how to get the best endurance flow out of your plane in order to sensibly calculate that figure. In the big iron stuff the company calculates it all for us, but we still spend more time in flight planning checking their fuel calculations (and usually ordering extra) than anything else. As one of my professional colleagues once pointed out: "they're fuel tanks, not air tanks".

In the Manchester accident, although the Captain's instantaneous thoughts (as per his post-accident interview) were that the bang was a tire failure and they might be able to return to the apron, these thoughts were never acted upon as the fire bells went off 9 seconds after the initial "bang" and halfway through his transmission to the tower telling them he was stopping the takeoff. He warned the cabin to prepare to evacuate 20 seconds before the aircraft had actually stopped (as they were going through 36 knots groundspeed). Unfortunately the right rear door was opened prematurely before the plane stopped and this was where the smoke and flames got into the cabin. No-one escaped through this door and the flight attendant there did not survive. People also started getting up into the aisles before it had stopped and it was the purser who (correctly) told them to stay seated. The aircraft was turned off the runway but unfortunately this had the unintended effect of having the side with the fire facing upwind. The evacuation was ordered quickly but was problematic due to panicking passengers jamming and totally blocking any movement up the aisle, one exit failing to open initially, and rapidly spreading smoke inside due to the nature of the fire. Fire services were applying foam 25 seconds after the plane stopped, and the fire spread so quickly the First Officer didn't even have time to finish the evacuation checklist before the Captain told him to take the escape rope through the cockpit window. 45 deaths were smoke inhalation and only 9 were from the heat of the fire. In our company, we make an initial standard, precisely worded PA in all these ground situations telling passengers to stay seated and wait for instructions. This has 2 purposes: 1) It is coded to inform the crew that we know there is a problem and we are dealing with it but we need a few more seconds to gather information and take checklist actions (like shutting down the engines), and for them to get up and start checking outside their exit windows. It is not an evacuation order though. 2) It is an initial attempt to nip in the bud the immediate inclination of passengers to start panicking and running around blocking evacuation routes and exits before they're even open.

They do normally compensate you. Which is why I said you can leave your bag behind and go on a splurge to buy new clothes and toiletries.

Passengers don't seem to understand that baggage, in the rush to get out, can catch in places, block exits, damage slides, injure other people, etc, etc. This is why you leave it behind. If the plane survives generally intact, you'll get it back eventually. If the plane explodes or burns to the ground, thank your lucky stars you're still alive and go out and buy a celebratory new set of toiletries and change of clothes.

You'll probably always be able to get insurance. It's just a matter of by whom and how much. I don't even do airshows, and there are only 2 companies in Australia who will insure my Pitts. The annual premium would make some people faint.

They still do that testing where the engine is internally destroyed with a small explosive charge while it's running at full power, to check that the containment casing functions properly, and all the variants of the B777 engine have had to pass it. Unfortunately they can't test for every single failure mode, including the "holy crap it's the mother of all booms" one. They might mod the casing after the investigation, or they might decide the odds were so astronomical that it's not worth it. Be interesting to see. This video is the RR Trent (essentially equivalent to the GE90 engine) on the A380.

If that speed it reached is about right, that is well below any possible V1 for a takeoff on a long range flight in that sized aeroplane. Your V1 range will be from something like 110 knots at extremely light weights (not possible if you have enough gas to get from Vegas to Gatwick!) up to about 150 knots at heavy weights, depending on flap setting.

There seem to be a few news reports quoting "90 mph" or thereabouts, though it's not clear where those figures came from. That would make it a relatively low-ish speed abort, but I'd be interested to know if it was fast enough for the autobrakes to be armed. Amendment to my last about the hot end too - it looks like the failure was in the high pressure stages of the compressor, rather than the turbine. But that's still pretty hot. Several 7-8 inch long fragments of the compressor spool were recovered from the runway. Source (on the engine information): NTSB press release.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the crew left all their luggage on board. During an evacuation the crew have a lot more things to think about and do than grab their bags. A lot of the wing is fuel tank. If you think about where the turbine section of a modern pod-mount jet engine is, and that an uncontained failure at takeoff thrust spits 800 deg C shards of that section outwards radially in pretty random directions, some of it is quite possibly going to severe or puncture something carrying a flammable liquid or vapour.

Yeah the choices in life: escape from burning plane or take clean socks. They've got it all sorted. Never mind that if they drop their bag in the kerfuffle of getting out, it might block an exit, or block a slide, or throw them off balance down the bottom and cause them to faceplant the tarmac. Let's just ignore the safety demo and do whatever we want.

The result of a "less than ideally contained" engine failure. Have a close look at the engine cowling and its shadow on the ground (there are no bits poking out of a normal jet engine cowling!).

Why the front LH door? In a ground scenario, once the Captain orders the general evacuation over the PA all the flight attendants go into "automatic" mode. A ground evac is only carried out on orders from the flight deck. Different for a ditching, because it's rather obvious. The door primaries (individual flight attendants allocated primary duty at each door) are trained to open their respective door if the exit path appears clear through the door window. So as long as that path straight out from the door is free of smoke and flames, that door gets opened. It certainly appears to be the case in the photos that the Left 1 door escape path is clear. While the slide is inflating, the door primary is bracing themselves across the door using the handholds either side, and getting a better view of the escape path and checking the slide inflates properly before they stand back out of the way next to the door opening, and start yelling at people to jump and thankyou for flying with us, have a nice day. At any point, the door primary can decide the situation around the escape slide is getting too dicey and declare a "blocked exit" and start shoving people across to join in the queue for the opposite door, or send them forward or backward depending on the flow. But as long as that escape path stays clear at L1, which it seems to have despite the smoke and flames 10 metres away, I would not expect them to do that. You will note that door L2 (left 2, just in front of the engine) stayed closed. That hostie deserves a big pat on the back. Obviously checked through the window, went "oh sh*t", and kept it closed while redirecting passengers across, forward, or backward to the other doors.

Left engine fire on takeoff, rejected takeoff, evacuation. Back to pub. Suspend alcohol-free fitness regime. Do paperwork later.

Energy management. It's all in the energy management. If that is screwed up, the results are, well.............. It is critical what your parameters are on entry, coupled with the g you set during the initial pullup. Entering a loop at "x" altitude with "y" power set with a 4g pullup will put you over the top at approximately the same height every time. Very minor adjustments over the top coupled with the same g onset back down the other side and you'll fly straight through back your own wake turbulence as you level out. Something clearly went awry at some point in this process and I'd suggest the errors started compounding early in the piece, rather than at the last second. The manoeuvre should never have been conducted over an open highway. I don't understand why that happened.

d'accord!

"One, two, three, four, jump!" was my interpretation on that play of words. Or maybe I was overthinking it......

What can happen when you overbank a large swept wing jet at low altitude.......

Don't worry, I didn't either & just thought it was poor French spelling until I looked up "sanqe" in the urban dictionary!

I agree with flyvulcan's theory that he's farewelling the field very aggressively (and somewhat stupidly because he does a gross over-bank on the way back through).

Ah no worries. I want to replace my trutrak with one. The Aus dollar is complicating any upgrade plans at the moment!