Flight returns to Newark after engine problem

[PEMO3 523]

"A tire blew during takeoff and flew into an engine, FBI spokeswoman Barbara Woodruff said. The Federal Aviation Administration said it could not confirm that.

Flight 96, with 173 passengers and crew, circled the airport and burned fuel before landing at 8:05 p.m., according to the FAA. United described it as a "mechanical issue."

http://www.cnn.com/2...lane/index.html

[dwcfireman 656]

This is the reason why the Concorde was decomishioned. Luckily B757's are of a more modern design, and the engines are capable of taking larger debris.

And the other hand, since take-off is the most dangerous part of any flight, losing 1 of 2 engines at this point is extremely critical, and can result in major catastrophe as the aircraft loses speed and gravity takes over.

[NJMedic 96]

I thought the Concorde was retired because it wasn't making economical sense to fly the Concorde anymore. But I guess one couls argue that a crash kinda of tuned people away from Concorde.

On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew members on board the flight, and four people on the ground. According to the official investigation the crash was caused by a titanium strip that fell from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off minutes earlier. This metal fragment punctured a tire on Concorde's left main wheel bogie during takeoff. The tire exploded, a piece of rubber hit the fuel tank, and while the fuel tank was not punctured, the impact caused a shock-wave which caused one of the fuel valves in the wing to burst open. This caused a major fuel leak from the tank, which then ignited due to sparking electrical landing gear wiring severed by another piece of the same tire. The crew shut down engine number 2 in response to a fire warning, and with engine number 1 surging and producing little power, the aircraft was unable to gain height or speed. The aircraft entered a rapid pitch-up then a violent descent, rolling left and crashing tail-low into the Hotelissimo Hotel in Gonesse. On 6 December 2010, Continental Airlines and John Taylor, one of their mechanics, were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

On 10 April 2003, Air France and British Airways simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following 11 September 2001, and rising maintenance costs. Although Concorde was technologically advanced when introduced in the 1970s, 30 years later its analogue cockpit was dated. There had been little commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde due to a lack of competing aircraft, unlike other airliners of the same era such as the Boeing 747. By its retirement, it was the last aircraft in British Airways' fleet that had a flight engineer; other aircraft, such as the modernized 747-400, had eliminated the role.

Edited August 21, 2012 by NJMedic

[dwcfireman 656]

I thought the Concorde was retired because it wasn't making economical sense to fly the Concorde anymore. But I guess one couls argue that a crash kinda of tuned people away from Concorde.

Somebody did they're homework on this one. The Concorde was an awesome plane, and it's unfortunate that it had to be retired. This was supposed to be the future of airline travel, and it would have been nice to fly to Europe in under 3 hours.

Despite the issues with the Concorde, commercial aviation in general is extremely safe. The planes are built tough to withstand the minor incidents we see every now and then, federal aviation regulations require redundant safety measures, and pilot training has increased significantly over the years. The down side is that we can't prevent everything from breaking, hence incidents like the one above with the B757.