Red plane on Flightradar24 over Manchester.

[Cheeseandlobster]

Are there any fellow Flightradar geeks on here? There is a red tui plane over Manchester right now squaking. Any idea why?

I'm surprised by how many people have said they no longer fly or feel nervous flying after go-arounds - I've experienced four of them (one last week!) and I always equate it to like when a drive pulls into a parking space but doesn't quite get it, then goes back out and pulls in again.

That said, one of mine was during that European storm right before Covid and it terrified me - it was a horrific landing that had to be tried three times. I was praying, other passengers were vomiting and wailing.

Very glad the Manchester flight is safe!

Engine out
Bird strike
Burning off fuel?

Maybe they were deciding which airport to divert to, what the costs would be, and checking that the airport had been screened for terrorists.....

Did Martin or Douglas land?

Yes, me. And for some bloody reason I now can’t get a picture of two of mine who are flight deck crew out of my mind even though I know they’re both off work today.

Do any flight geeks know if this kind of thing is happening more frequently at the moment? Or is it just that it's more newsworthy when it is happening?

and I always equate it to like when a drive pulls into a parking space but doesn't quite get it, then goes back out and pulls in again

Taking a second go to get into my parking space doesn’t feel quite the same as almost hitting the tarmac and then taking off again almost vertical with the engines screaming, but I do now know it happens a lot. At the time we were a bit WTF rather than panicking.

See that got me more.

To be honest @PinkTonic I used to be a terrible flyer, this may well be how I brainwashed myself into being a good one

What LittelRen says - there can be reasons why it is safer not to rush back for a landing...it sound very tempting to do that but it could be catastrophic.

Basically at take-off the aircraft (certainly a long haul one) will often be above it's maximum certified landing weight because of the fuel it is carrying....Now Boeing/Airbus etc will say it is possible in such circumstances from a pure engineering POV to return immediately to the airport and land straight away but there's a risk overstressing the landing gear, perhaps overheating brakes so doing that may not be without it's risks.

So, the teaching is (or was)..if you lose an engine on take-off firstly control the initial problem (fly the aircraft, secure the engine) and head off to a safe place. After that the flight crew (pilots) come up with a plan, usually after a discussion with ATC, company engineers and others involved.

99% of the time the plan would be to go through all that's required in a methodical manner, dump fuel to get down to landing weight, followed by a normal landing albeit on one engine.

A couple of other points, firstly many engine problems can look/sound quite spectacular to the passengers but actually aren't much more than a car backfire, or if they are an actual failure it's all usually contained within the engine structure - once the engine is shut down that problem is contained, done, dusted...A bang/flash doesn't mean the engine has exploded or you must rush to land.

The other point is with regard to time scale - with many "heavies" if you take off near maximum take off weight it can take best part of an hour to dump down to maximum take off weight, which explains the holding.

HTH

I used to live in South East London, and so London City was the easiest airport to get to, but I only flew out of it the once because the take-off and landing freaked me out so much, and I'm not normally a very nervous flier. Particularly the take-off, where it felt like you were practically going vertical in the first few seconds.

Having to do that in bad weather, I'd have been having kittens.

If you want to spend an interesting evening, have a trawl through avherald.com
This is a record of all incidents everywhere, daily.

I read on another forum years ago that the aviation industry got its act together and started collaborating on the reporting of all incidents, no matter how small, in a spirit of ‘communication is information’ which has helped to improve air safety.

Someone else said that if the NHS worked on this basis (rather than hiding its failings and not learning from mistakes) it would truly be the great service it should be.

Not heard of any grumbles about failures increasing ..Problem is these days with the tracker sites the MSM and SM pick up on stuff being newsworthy.

I'm quite used to go-arounds, I used to fly into Gibraltar frequently. (If you know, you know.)

And did they get sushi when they landed, or just lunch at the crew canteen?

Gawd I know 🙈

Or a nice hot cup of coffee?

I really enjoyed reading this thread, the sharing of knowledge is outstanding and so funny at times - thanks x

But as scary as it must’ve been, it’s quite reassuring to know that an engine can blow up mid flight and the pilots can still fly the plane and get everyone down safe.

They really do earn their money.

if anyone wants to watch it land

@cakeorwine Maybe they were waiting for the airport to be swept for assassins?

Have had a fascinating conversation with DH on the back of this thread. He's an aircraft engineer and former test flight engineer. Normally when he talks aircraft stuff at me I fall asleep but have actually learned loads from him. Glad the aircraft came down safely.

The worse bit I thought was watching the plane on FR when it stopped circling and went on the last slow descent back out over the Peak District and in to land.

To me it felt a bit ghoolish then, if that flight had ended in tragedy and we'd all spent the last 2 hours going 'ooh look at that'.

But yes, very reassuring that they kept it up there all that time on one engine and landed safely.

very reassuring that they kept it up there all that time on one engine and landed safely.

FWIW modern twin engined long range airliners, an early example of which is the 767, are designed to fly on one engine (in the event of an engine failure) for at least 180 minutes to allow such aircraft to operate trans oceanic flights. Holding on one engine near Manchester for an hour or two in theory shouldn't have been an issue.

I believe that time limit for flight on one engine has now been extended out beyond 180 minutes for some aircraft/some airlines/in some circumstances.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS#Beyond_ETOPS-180

How far back does it go? I remember an incident in my youth when we were travelling on a propeller aircraft which, I think, had a fire in one engine. They put it out but the engine was dead and we landed in Khartoum. Our parents must have done a great job of keeping calm, I have no memory of being frightened at any point. I'd quite like to check whether my memory of all this is accurate.

I used to love flying into Gib, especially when Spain had their air space closed and it flew down the coast, turned into the Bay of Algeciras at quite a height then had to turn and drop rapidly for landing! It was like a white knuckle ride

not quite the same but I was on a plane about to land at Gatwick in I think 2018 just before christmas when the drone issue kicked off. We had no idea what was going on just saw the plane suddenly do a 90 degree turn and start flying north on the fight path screen tracker when we should have been landing. Very stressful 15 mins (and quiet plane) until we were told what was happening.