Expert: Paul Ruderham - 4/19/2004

Question
Dear Paul,
A few years back I heard that a commercial   airliner lost one engine in mid flight, due to a bad compressor that had gone up as they were in mid flight. With all of the technology now you would think that the computers sensor would have warned the pilot beforehand. have you heard anything about this?
Please respond. Thanks, John

Answer
dear john, it all depends when the fault occured. the aircraft has very sophisticated instruments to tell the pilot if anything is wrong, eg; fan speed, temperature, fuel flow, etc. If this incident did happen than nothing was wrong until they were airborne. if the fault occured in mid air then the pilot would shut down the engine and continue on the others and divert to the nearest airport.
Besides engine failures are very rare occurences, they are tested to destruction and are very reliable. So reliable in fact that most twin engined airliners are cleared for atlantic ops with a three hour diversion time to the nearest airport. I once heard a rolls royce engineer say that when aircraft come in for servicing on the engines, they open them up admire them and close the lid again as they are so efficient. I presume he was exagerrating a bit!
Regards
PR  

Regards
PR