Investigators Find Signs Birdstrike May Have Caused Crash of Flight 587

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 13, 2001 | SCOTT MCCARTNEY

[Axion]

Investigators examining one of the separated engines from American Airlines Flight 587 found foreign debris inside, indicating that the engine may have ingested a flock of birds and then caught on fire.

The engine burned internally, people close to the investigation said. But its parts appeared intact, except for the damage from what is known in aviation as ``foreign object debris,'' or ``FOD.'' That would suggest that the engine didn't suffer a catastrophic failure from some mechanical breakdown, but from sucking in birds, these people said.

[Nimitz]

Hey Colt .45, I don't care if you are an aviation boatswans mate or whatever, You got your head up your Clymer. Read my post again if you want a clue. I've changed out more GE jet engines than all of FR put together. My posts are relevant to the engine and it's support system, not the chassis in general. Show me the money Clymer. SHOW ME THE FACTS. That's your toothless mantra, isn't it? Well? I challenge you to show me ONE GE CF56 or GE90 that has failed in flight because of FOD by fowl. JUST ONE!!! Come on pilots!! I worked the GE90 program for 2.5 yrs. I've had access to every incident report regarding CF56 in-flight failures. Again, slam and run demogogues can't or won't SHOW ME THE MONEY!

[patriciaruth]

our government has given us reason to be suspicious. it's not like they haven't lied to us before. ;)

"Take off your girdle and have a good cry." Our government changed hands on January 20, 2001, and although we are still in process of rooting out Clinton hold-overs and waiting and waiting for nominations for middle management positions to be confirmed by Senate, quite a sea-change has already happened.

The government we have now does not deliberately lie to us. When they know what happened with this crash and with the anthrax mailings, they will not lie about it.

[Colt .45]

A whole 2.5 years! Gosh, you must be a real stud!

I'll gather my facts from the folks that know just a little bit more about it than you. Gather some more experience in the field then I might be willing to listen to you. You sound like an AME in my first outfit I was ever with. He knew it all until he rode an ejection seat up to the roof one day. If anyone has their head up and locked in their Clymer ... its you!

[The Westerner]

I was on a 747 climbing out of JFK that sucked a seagull into one of its engines. It made a horrible sound and scared the passengers, including me. I don't remember if it flamed. Fortunately, all went as planned. The pilots shut down the engine, and flew to Chicago instead of S.F. where they dumped fuel for awhile over Lake Michigan and landed at O'Hare.

[Preech1]

Maybe it was Rodan!!! Where's Godzilla when you need him??

[Fury]

Your rant, is not what I wrote about. You stated previously:

Bird strikes are not a viable source of FOD resulting in a MAJOR mechanical failure/fire/engine separation in this day and age; the only way they become a legitimate candidate is with some VERY OLD airframes.

Your statement is not correct and there are Class A mishaps to prove it. Those are the facts. If you are going to get defensive and start to pout, please continue to do so.

[Sistyelder]

"When a turban fan comes loose, it can act just like Zena's frisbee weapon, it will slice through anything it comes in contact with. This is what happened in Pensacola. The fan section went through the engine housing and into the fuselage, then the passengers."

This is what I was saying before!!! If this can happen so easily....then why would I ever want to fly again!!?

Plus....about the birds....why would there be a major airport that the runway flies directly over a wild life refuge where the birds live?!

[Pipers]

Chickadees I understand...Two.

[Positive]

Your post #248 is about the most rational analysis I've seen on this thread and I read them all...I have been quite skeptical of the truth factor in the media on this event.

An example is the report that seems to have started with Gov. Pataki at a press conference saying the pilot had been dumping fuel. Today an Airbus official says this is impossible.

I too have wondered about the "back half" of the stabilizer being missing and whether knocking it off would cause the whole tail to shorn from the fuselage so cleanly.

I also saw one report on MSNBC where the analysis speculated that the left engine knocked the stabilizer off. I wonder that since that would mean that the stabilizer was moving forward and the engine backward wouldn't dictate that the engine would fall in the same area as the stabilizer - too much physics for me.

On your last point - the rationale for wanting this to be an accident as opposed to terrorism, I'm afraid that that blade has two edges. Yes I would prefer to take my chances with terrorism rather than with faulty airplane maintenance. But if it was a duck and the airframe and engine were so unstable or the crew so incompetent that the plane couldn't hold together and or the crew couldn't control it for an emegency landing - these are pretty ugly pictures too.

[catpuppy]

NTSB investigator just said that there was no evidence of a birdstrike and that whoever claimed to have seen such evidence must have taken it with them. Also, the engines are said to be largely intact with no evidence of any sort of internal failure.

[PhiKapMom]

Just debunked at the NTSB briefing going on -- no sign of bird strike! No internal failure of the engine according to preliminary inspection.

[discostu]

I just posted on a different thread about this one too. It's important to remember just how chaotic a crash is. Planes have literally thousands (some planes close to a million) parts. When a plane starts coming apart some of those parts become projectiles, sometimes knocking lose other parts. There are so many wierd ways that things can fall: the wieght, the aerodynamics, the direction of inertia (both in general space and against the object itself, people like to talk about how aerodynamic the tail is, but if the tail was broadside forward when it came off it was not aerodynamic at that time), the way it came off all effect what order and positioning the parts land in. And the NTSB can never explain every single part, there are always anomalies that drive them nuts forever about every crash. The answer they have for why the tail landed do far up crash could be "ask God, because we don't know."

[discostu]

As for your last point on my last point, I think that's why everybody (especially AA) would rather this was terrorists (pilot error and/or act of God (birds) being preferred answer #2). Let's face it, for a plane to go down do to mechanical problems 60ish days after the entire fleet was grounded for almost a week (a good time for major maintenance I'd think) would be a crime so unforgivable that I don't think AA could survive that diagnosis. The entire industry would really take it in the pants on that, but AA could pretty well just lock up and call it quits if that's the verdict.

[Positive]

In late 1988 I was riding in a Pan-Am 747 enroute from LA to JFK. Suddenly it was as if the plane had hit a "bump in the road." My experience is that there are no bumps.

Turns out that one of the 4 engines had siezed up and at 500ish MPH that is much like a parachute being suddenly deployed from the wing.

To shorten the story, the plane returned for a safe (and smooth) landing at LAX.

At that moment I decided that I would never again fly on an airline whose stock is selling for $1.25 or less.

Now I think I will institute a policy of not flying on an airline who only gets 60 cents on the dollar that they NEED from the Feds in bail-out money.

[holly]

I had the pleasure (?)of doing contract work in a plant that manufactured the engines. One of the tests was to throw chickens into the engine. To my knowledge a chicken never stopped an engine.

[Charles Henrickson]

What . . . is the air-speed velocity of a binladen swallow?

[Nimitz]

With regard to my rant: The old airframes comment was meant to indicate that older planes have older ie not recently designed engines GENERALLY SPEAKING. I did not mean to indicate that an older plane is any more suceptible to damage from FOD than a newer plane. Only the ENGINE, which is what the WSJ was trying to have us believe. Yes, engines have been shut down due to in-flight FOD. The FAA keeps very detailed records regarding same. No one is more concerned or in tune with the specifics of these incidents than the OEM (GE, for the purposes of this discussion). What I am saying is this: GE has no record or specific evidence to indicate that a CF56 or GE90 has been lost (shutdown by force without a subsequent relite) due to FOD by foul. Guess what? The NTSB announced tonight that no engine damage was suspected. I guess they were reading our threads.

[RightOnline]

Now, stop it, TG...............yer killin' me here.......:)

[LSJohn]

Maybe they should have found evidence indicating a terrorist attack in the first 30 minutes (according to you), but they didn't.

My point was that they were saying "no evidence of terrorist involvement" at a time when they had essentially no evidence of any kind. What they said was probably true, but bore an implication which was (as they hoped IMO) later spun by others as "apparently no terrorist involvement."

At the time they first started saying no evidence of terrorists, they might just as well have said "no evidence of mechanical failure" or "no evidence of bird strike" or "no evidence of meteor strike."

I would prefer that when they don't know anything they don't say what they don't have evidence of.

[tuesday afternoon]

I skipped straight to the last post.

I agree. These statements are being parsed incorrectly.