[Agathos]

The failure of the center engine on a trijet can be scary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

"The uncontained manner in which the engine failed resulted in high-speed metal fragments being hurled from the engine; these fragments penetrated the hydraulic lines of all three independent hydraulic systems on board the aircraft..."

[laurent92]

But that was a DC-10. It’s good share of the 400 Air Crash Investigation episodes. The first reason is that it has had a long life. The second is that it was comically badly engineered. Again, perhaps because AutoCAD didn’t exist in 1970 engineering. But the mistakes are still funny:

- They forgot to include a compas in the cockpit, so they put it in the overhead space and added mirrors to see it. It often resulted in mechanics mounting it backwards (since the mirror showed a reverse view). You have certainly see that in the movie Airplane, thinking the rearview mirrors were part of a joke.

- The MD-11, its successor, was too long, so pilots didn’t feel when they touched down, and they tended to slam the nose because of that, resulting in at least one filmed accident. The FAA shouldn’t have approved the elongation, at least not without adaptation, this was milking too much of the same cow,

- It’s a plane which loses pieces. Its successor the MD-11 lose the famous piece that broke the Concorde. This is in addition to the DC-10 losing doors in flight, due to badly engineered mechanism, and getting FAA approval to not have to replace them immediately, which caused another crash. Two plane crashes for the same cause, does it ring a bell? and FAA approving the defective aircraft again, sounds twice familiar?

In the later days, DCs were only used for postal services and not carrying passengers. Boeing bought MD circa 2003.

[touisteur]

I actually felt sick when I read the post-accident description of the damages the exploding rolls-royce engine from QF32, did to its hydraulic, electronic systems... https://web.archive.org/web/20150112234930/http://www.atsb.g... and it's a nacelle-based design. They couldn't even control the other engine under that wing afterwards, couldn't shut it down on the tarmac...

Uncontained engine failure must be one of the most impressive things to witness. Especially on engines as powerful as the RR Trent 900.

[sneak]

The story of UA232 is up there with AC143 as one of my favorite things to read.