The stuff of "Six Days, Seven Nights" .. I'll take my chances with one engine for a couple of hours!.
Posted on 12/31/2022 6:06:14 PM PST by libh8er
This incident took place on United Airlines flight UA839, which operates the 7,488-mile journey from Los Angeles (LAX) to Sydney (SYD). Specifically, this involves the flight that was scheduled to take off at 10:55PM on Thursday, December 29, 2022, and land in Sydney at 9:15AM on Saturday, December 31, 2022. Presumably most of the 230 passengers onboard were excited to celebrate the new year in Sydney.
The flight was operated by a seven-year-old Boeing 787-9 with the registration code N38955. For roughly the first seven hours, the flight operated as planned, flying southwest over the Pacific Ocean, including flying to the south of Hawaii.
However, at that point there were reportedly some engine issues, and the plane’s right engine had to be shut down. That’s never a fun situation when you’re flying in a remote area, with limited diversion points. At this point the flight was just north of Kiribati, and the plane started flying to the south.
The United 787 descended from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet down to 20,000 feet, where it proceeded to cruise for nearly three hours.
After roughly 10 hours in the air, the plane ended up diverting to Pago Pago, American Samoa (PPG), where it landed at 6:22AM local time on December 30, 2022 (Pago Pago is on the opposite side of the International Date Line of Sydney).
Keep in mind that since American Samoa is a US territory, travelers can enter with a US passport. I wonder if that factored into the decision to divert there compared to another airport in the region.
United Airlines dispatches rescue Boeing 787 United Airlines generally does a great job with minimizing disruptions from diversions, and this was no exception. Obviously finding a spare Boeing 787 and sending it to Pago Pago is no small task, especially when you consider that you also need to find a crew that’s “legal” to work the trip, while minimizing disruptions to other passengers.
Following this incident, United dispatched a Boeing 787-9 from Sydney to Pago Pago. United sent a roughly two-year-old plane with the registration code N24979. It would appear that United canceled its Sydney to Houston flight to make this happen — I imagine it wasn’t too full, departing Australia just before the new year.
The plane departed Sydney for the 2,736-mile journey at 5:22PM on December 31, 2022, and landed in Pago Pago at 12:44AM on December 31, 2022.
The plane is now scheduled to operate as UA3032 from Pago Pago to Sydney, departing at 3AM on December 31, 2022, and arriving in Sydney at 7:01AM on January 1, 2023. That’s quite some time travel! 😉
One engined 787 makes its way to Pago Pago
Thank you for the clarification.
I was in the USAF, and had nothing to do with flying. :)
So that's a different flavor of kerosene than he should have used?
I’d love to be in Pago Pago right now. Warm there and oh those ocean breezes.
BTW, love your screen name.
The stuff of horror movies!
Hope all goes well.
Happy New Year libh8er.
Do you realize that was actual “reporting?”
Just the facts ma’am.
Even when some opinion was added, it was clarified to be that.
I wish all the news were like this. Factual, chronological, few assumptions and opinions, and not trying to somehow tie a pop culture or corporate government theme into the story.
I remember an F-4 losing an engine on take-off. They managed to circle back and land.
It was an Aerostar which had turbo on the engine nacelles. Aviation gas required. There was just enough gas between the tanks and the engines to get him out over very inhospitable terrain.
I liked the guy and it was so disturbing that I never read the full report, but my guess is that he had full rudder to compensate for the loss of power in one engine and when the second one quit it probably rolled over on its back before he could react.
I never flew or rode in one, but the Aerostar had the reputation that you better do everything exactly right.
A very experienced pilot who flew fighters in the Korean unpleasantness.
“ Happy New Year libh8er.”
And to you !
Did they find Amelia Earhart on Pago Pago?
What a silly question. To monitor moms expressing their concerns at school board meetings about what their children are being taught. Duh!
“ My longest flight was a nonstop from New York to Hawaii”
As a young E4 I flew from St Louis to Seoul Korea. We landed in Oakland and Anchorage and Tokyo to pick up and drop off passengers but never got off the plane. I’m not sure about total time but it felt like 2 days.
The stuff of "Six Days, Seven Nights" .. I'll take my chances with one engine for a couple of hours!.
‘Tis a fact that the old DC-3 airliner had to demonstrate that it could TAKE OFF fully loaded with one engine dead, and from the highest airport in American Airlines’ system, before American would buy the airplane. It could and did.
What’s impressive today is the rarity of inflight failures of modern jet engines. Thousands of them in the air at any given moment, and if one has to be shut down it gets global news coverage. Thank the engineers at GE, Roll-Royce, and Pratt & Whitney for a job well done.
There are no factories on Guam. I lived there until 2019.
I was in the tower when a Marine F-4 landed at NAS Albany, GA. The pilot, a Marine Captain, said he was there to pick something up and he’d be leaving shortly. He parks on the main ramp, hops out, runs his errand and is back in no time. He cranks his plane up and calls for taxi, which I cleared. He gets out on the taxiway and immediately starts calling for takeoff clearance. I had an aircraft on final, so I told the F-4 “negative”. He was getting closer to the end of the taxiway and the turn for the runway, and calls again for clearance to takeoff. I told him to hold short. Then I thought I saw smoke coming from his left wheel...grabbed the binocs...and saw fire. I relayed to the pilot that he had a wheel fire. He said “Roger tower, shutting down.”. We rolled the crash crew...which put the fire out. Of course, we trotted out to survey the damage. Fun stuff.
Apparently, after firing up his engines, one of the engines continued to rev up uncontrollably. The yahoo pilot was riding the brakes all the way down the taxiway, trying to keep it from getting away from him. He figured, if he could just get in the air, fly it like it was, declare an emergency at his home station (Cherry Point MCAS, I believe), land, call it a day and be at the O-Club by dinner time. Unfortunately, his brakes overheated and set his wheel on fire.
Why yes.
I doubt the 787-9 can maintain FL380 on one engine. Hence the descent to FL200. Shutting down an engine is serious but necessary to protect safety and the engine itself
I believe you are mistaken. The DC-3 is a “tail dragger,” and cannot taxi on one engine, much less take off!
Made that run many times but from Houston to LA then to Sydney or Melbourne then on to Perth. No directs from Houston to at that time. Often went from East to West and then the other way just to see what gave the worse jet lag and to say I’d done it. Likewise went back through London going home just to say I’d been around the world.
The worst layover was to deplane in Seoul or Singapore. I was always exhausted when we got there. Seoul was not in good shape, threadbare in those days. I fell asleep one time and just about missed the plane. My good Old Timer knife fell out of a pocket and I didn’t have time to go back and get it.
You get acquainted with the flight crew, go up and down the stairs a few hundred times and wear on their patience while trying to keep your blood flowing, never understood how the other passengers could make it just sitting. Read two Clancy novels or Ludlum or something like that, draw and think about gardening or building something, peck on the computer a lot and pretend to get something done.
I just never did well being confined, ditto with school and work sitting still. I have to have zero distractions to focus. Sounds a little like AADD doesn’t it? I either multi-task or immerse in just one thing.
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