"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Arfa Daily wrote:

"Eeyore" wrote
Arfa Daily wrote:

The 747 has got three ...

Engines ? BA flew one from LAX to MAN on 3 engines, one having failed
after take-off.

The FAA didn't like it much and made a big fuss but concluded it was
within the regs.

Graham

Three potentially *redundant* engines is what I said. The 747 is capable
of
still remaining airborne and controllable, with just one motor running,
as
far as I am aware.

TWO IIRC, A 747 will be descending on one, so the redundancy on twin
engined
airliners is pretty similar esp since they have more modern and reliable
engines.

Graham

Whatever. Even if it needs two to maintain level flight, that's still two
out of four, which leaves two that can be out, which is better than two
going out on a two engined plane. I would still prefer to have just one out
of four running, even if that did place the plane in a descent
configuration. At least, coupled with the substantial glide characteristic,
that descent is going to be very slow. As to how modern and reliable engines
are, that doesn't really mean a lot if you have say multiple bird strikes.

I spoke to my aviator friend yesterday about fly by wire incidents, and he
says that he has read of many, although ones that have resulted in a large
scale catastrophe, have been fairly rare. As to pilot error being "the
biggest cause of accidents", he said that you should be careful how you
interpret the numbers on this, with respect to other published causes. He
agrees that many incidents are pilot related, but he also said that it is
nothing like the TV program "Air Crash Investigation" where every crash gets
resolved to a wrongly fitted bolt or whatever, and that many incidents never
have a real cause determined. In these cases, apparently, it is normal to
log the (probable) cause as 'pilot error'. He also said that just about all
training accidents, of which there are apparently many, are logged as 'pilot
error', so one way or another, this distorts the figures against the true
situation.

Arfa