On Thursday night an Atlas Air Boeing 747-8 cargo plane took off from Miami heading towards San Juan. As it climbed through 2,000 feet from runway 9, the plane’s number two engine caught fire. The plane returned to the airport and taxied to the apron under its own power. According to the FAA, “Inspection revealed a softball size hole above #2 engine.”
According to The Aviation Herald,
The aircraft stopped the climb at 3000 feet and returned to Miami for a safe landing on runway 09 about 15 minutes after departure. The aircraft vacated the runway and stopped on taxiway T8 for checks by emergency services, following the checks the aircraft taxied to the apron.
An Atlas Air Boeing cargo plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Miami International Airport after experiencing an engine malfunction shortly after departure, today.
The crew followed all standard procedures and safely returned to MIA.pic.twitter.com/5BLPAMNhn9
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 19, 2024
The 8 year old aircraft, registration N859GT, has 4 GEnx engines. This appears to have been a well-executed emergency on the part of pilots, air traffic control, and crew on the ground.
Due to the pulsing nature, looks much more like engine surges, which can be pretty spectacular at night, as opposed to an ‘engine fire’. For unrecoverable surges like that (meaning you pull throttle back to idle, then command shutdown if surges don’t subside), there is probably a broken part in the gaspath or the control systems, which might including variable vanes, etc.
Like all airplanes it’s just a machine and things happen. Yes it was a well executed recovery/return by the crew and ATC and it shows the safety backups work. Unfortunately the news talking heads don’t explain that part and it becomes one more strike against Boeing.
Big picture..they need to move corporate HQ back to SEA and put the a/c engineer’s back in charge of driving the train.
Picard
I expect that the hate Boeing first crowd will pin it all on Boeing.