Replies

The most challenging thing about the flight was the psychological aspect of it. Unnerved passengers, broken window, engine blown, smoke beginning to fill the cabin, the rapid descent, a woman with half of her torso sticking out of the airplane .. - if you ignore all that, and a trained pilot will, the protocol to follow was fairly routine. The plane was never in any real danger. What could have been dangerous was losing the other engine and/or losing flight controls. In fact I will say losing flight controls, meaning losing the ability to control the plane, is the single most dangerous thing that can happen to an airplane. With one engine blown you can still fly to a nearby airport and land safely. With both blown in a twin engine but the controls intact, the plane can be made to fly like a glider and made to land on a flat surface. But if you lose controls (rudder, ailerons, vertical stabilizer etc) you are very likely going to crash. Modern airplanes have a lot of built in redundancies so losing all controls is an unlikely scenario. In this case though the typical passenger inside the plane wouldn't have known - from declaring emergency to landing - it was a very routine operation. Descend rapidly to 10,000 ft where the air is breathable and then follow procedures to bring plane in for landing. Almost all of it done by autopilot.