If a jet plane loses it's engine on one side, can it still fly?

Question

Jet plane, engine under wings, and engines on one side of the plane stop working. What happens?

Answer 1

Here comes single-engine aerodynamics 101.

Assuming an aircraft with wing mounted engines (ie 737) loses an engine in flight, the following will occur:

The engine on the good side is still producing power, so it starts to pull the good wing forward a little faster than the bad wing. This "Yaw" will cause a couple of effects, first the good wing is going slightly faster than the bad and therefore producing more lift. More significantly, the swept wing is now more directly exposed to the airstream, making it behave as if it were longer than the wing pivoted away from the direction of flight. This will cause more lift on the good side.

This results in a plane that tries to turn its nose into the dead engine, while the wing on the dead side drops.

This is a situation trained for by all multi-engine pilots and is quite survivable.

The proper response is to step on the rudder of the good side, canceling most of the yaw, while at the same time raising the dead engine with aileron input. The takeoff speeds for airliners are predicated on having enough aerodynamic control to do this in the event of an engine failure at V1 (takeoff decision speed), and airline pilots practice it in the simulator. You then climb out at a reduced rate and do your checklists.

This is also true for tail mounted aircraft like a MD80, but the effect is less dramatic, as the arm of the asymmetric thrust is shorter.

Answer 2

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RE:
If a jet plane loses it's engine on one side, can it still fly?
Jet plane, engine under wings, and engines on one side of the plane stop working. What happens?

Answer 3

Even with one engine, the plane can fly for quite a long time. I have actually shut down an engine in flight on purpose. We had an oil pressure indication and the procedure called for shutting down the engine. We flew just fine. It actually took us about 30 minutes to reach the next airport and we landed without any problems. Other than us telling the passengers what had happened they had no idea that an engine had been shut down.

Answer 4

Any mulit-engine airplane can continue to fly on one engine... The original question about "loosing" an engine made me think of the American Airlines DC-10 that really LOST the engine on takeoff at ORD a couple decades ago... it damaged the wing to the point that the airplane could not fly... also, poor engine out procedures at the time made the pilots bring the throttle back which made the problem worse by inducing a stall... now if the pilots are over V2, they are to stay over V2 if they lose and engine and not return to V2 as the DC-10 pilot did....

Answer 5

do u mean if the engine fails or if it falls off?
if the engine fails then the plane can still fly for some time. in fact a 4 engined 747 can still make it on two engines although double engine failure almost never happens. a plane can even glide if it loses all of its engines.

if an engine falls off the plane will crash because the weight of the side the engine is on will pull the plane down

Answer 6

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Answer 7

yes. in the Caribbean, to is advisable to fly only in an aircraft with two engines because of the amount of water in that area.

Pilots train in simulators to prepare for engine out scenarios which include during take off, straight and level flight, and decent and landing.

Answer 8

Twin-engined jets have more than enough power to continue on one engine if the other quits. You lose some of your speed, but nowhere near enough to jeopardize flight safety.

Answer 9

Yes, assuming it has another which does not quit. The pilot simply has to adjust the trim in order to compensate for the assymetrical forces resulting from an engine out. The same is true for propeller driven engines, in which case you would also feather the prop on the dead engine to keep it from windmilling thereby reducing drag on that side.

Answer 10

A commercial airliner is built to withstand loss of an engine and believe it or not most can glide a fairly long distance without any power.