A Singapore Airlines Airbus jet lost power on all of its engines mid-flight

About rain ingestion flameout, an amazing story is Taca flight 110 in May of 1988.Landed dead stick on a levy.No serious injuries. Plane repaired and still in service today.

I saw a radar pic on Flightradar indicating the choice of route was directly into a severe thunderstorm. Will be interesting to see the official outcome.

Why didn't they immediately divert to Hong Kong if that was the closest airport at the time of engine recovery?

Felipe, very good point. The Trent engines are fairly easy to restart due to the programming in the Rolls engines. They will continue to attempt restarts unless the PIC de sides to override and attempt a manual start but it is far better to allow the Rolls to attempt auto start. Descending allows better and more powerful spooling for the restart. This of course is best with both power plants out. With a single failure, bleed over assist and the auto-throttle up, to maintain cruise, makes the restart much easier.

"When a jet like the A330 loses an engine, it's still certified to fly for as long as four hours on the remaining engine. Obviously, when a jet loses both engines, the situation is much more serious."

Yep, then they are certified to fly on no engines for 8 hours....thanks folk, I'll be playing here all week. :-)

I'm surprised they didn't divert to the "nearest airport at a point in time" Hong Kong as opposed to continuing on to Shanghai. If my engines quit, even for a known reason such as Ice ingestion or heavy water ingestion, my thought would be to get it on the ground for inspection to ensure some other internal damage hadn't occurred as opposed to flying away from a perfectly good piece of asphalt.

possible water ingestion or core ice formation in thunderstorm?

Singapore probably lost a few passengers bags as well.....

Conversations with colleagues recently exposes thoughts and feelings of relutance to fly with either Malaysia Airlines or Air Asia as a result of dramatic incidents with with both these companies. A reported potential incident with Singapore Airlines demonstrates that any and every airline can experience problems. I am delighted with the current restructure with Malaysia Airlines.

Pilot says get the manual and initiate a restart of the failed engine. Copilot starts resetting wrong engine. Pilot says we have lost both engines now. Copilot says.......

Read the article again. It lost 13,000 feet.

Thanks;

i still can't understand why pilots fly into thunderstorms.

sS I mentioned on a previous comment, any airline can experience alarming problems. On 2 June Qantas had a situation that raised alarms. QF 93 travelling Melbourne to Los Angeles made an unplanned stoppage at Sydney due to uncertain mechanical issues.

On a simulator training session quite a few years ago, the instructor threw some smoke in the cockpit of a DC9 enroute from YUL to YYZ but only 5 min before being a beam YOW. The crew went through the fire/smoke drill perfectly. The only problem was they did not immediately divert to YOW but kept flying to YYZ.

Bill Winslow's question needs an anwser unless the crew knew exactly why the engines stopped.

There have been quiet a few folks here questioning why the pilots did not use a diversion airstrip and set the 330 down on the ground. There are several probables to this question. With the extended times given in ETOPS (rules that govern how far away a twin engine can fly from a diversion airstrip), the allowable time is set at 120 minutes plus 15% once an airliner's indicated speed drops below 389 knots. I know, in some cases ETOPS is set at 180 minutes, but this perimeter is used for special long haul equipment, normally designated as "E" for extended range. But back to ETOPS concerning this flight 836. ETOPS is designed for an engine out scenario so in a case like flight 836 where you have dual flame outs, the rules of engagement change dramatically. The first rule as a Captain is to go to Engine Status on the MFD and make a determination as to the cause of loss of power. Just like in an automobile, if your engine suddenly shuts down without a warning, you go to the gauges. Fuel? OK. Oil pressure? OK. Temperature? OK, and so on. But when dealing with power plants the size of a small bus and the thrust to lift 450,000 lbs, the problem solving becomes very trying, even when your on board computer is accessing 250 inputs in micro seconds. As a professional pilot, you spend literally hundreds of hours in simulators preparing you for this one of many emergencies that might present itself in flight. And it is at this time that you must recall all of that knowledge and act accordingly. Believe me, as an airline pilot, you want to get back onto terra firma just as much as any other person on board! To be cruising at nearly 40,000 feet and loose all power from your engines will cause you to sit up straight but it also puts you into a different mode as a pilot. You become keenly aware of your instrument readings most of which is how near am I to stall speed! Dropping even 15,000 feet in this case would still have given the PIC time to commit to an alternate runway according to charts in and around his flight path. All in all a good flight with a good landing at the destination airport!

The captain has power dispatch in the US. At least we did when I was flying DC10s.

i would of needed change of underwear lol

This is the awesome investigation report of the Taca 110 flight
http://youtu.be/No_qRxsK_i0

...and just when I am about to take an SQ flight from BKK to SIN on Monday... wonderful. I will be taking a good look to see what engines are fitted - not that the knowledge will assist in any way of course - hm, maybe I will NOT look.

If it was caused by the proximity to the thunderstorm (and water intake) I will be both surprised and rather less than impressed, since the Asian region can experience tropical storms for much of the year.

Surprised that they did not divert to Hong Kong or another alternate.

S

Possibly like the Southern Airways DC9 that lost thrust on both engines after hail ingestion on 4 April 1977? Per airsafe.com, landed on a road near New Hope, Georgia but hit trees and a building. Unfortunately lost 62 of 85 lives on the DC9 plus 8 people on the ground. Too much water in any form is bad.

Sorry for the auto spell check errors. In a bit of a hurry. Rolls Royce engines are among the best in the world. Next to GE's Next Gen engines, the Trents are some of the finest power plants available. Rolls prides themselves in finding any problem that occurs in their engines and I'm confident they'll find the issue that caused these flame outs.

What is missing here is the Airbus flight manual instructions for an engine out emergency. The sequence to follow for an in flight engine start is fairly basic to all turbo fan engines. A dual engine failure would point to a fuel interruption. However, RR engines have an auto restart feature that is controlled by the flight management computer. The loss of 13,000 feet in a dual power plant failure would be normal for the Airbus A319/320 if the plane was at Mach .85 at 40,000 feet. As to the question of putting the plane on the ground with engines shut down, there are contingency plans already in the works as soon as the engines loose power, whether it be a single engine or both. All pilots are familiar with the story of the Gimly Glider and the miss calculation of fuel on that flight which caused both engines to flame out with no chance for restart. This in fact turned the Boeing into a giant glider. According to Singapore Air, there ground investigation produced know reason for the flame out. What we have not heard is what RR knows about this incident. Rolls continuously monitors its engines and can record over 230 engine sensor inputs in live time. This is where the real story will come from as Rolls Royce gathers all the monitored information and produces their own report on the engines.

you need spell check my friend.

I question the pilots choice to continue flying for another one and half hours rather than divert to a closer air field. Makes me wonder if the shut down was not accidental in nature and not a mechanical problem. This happened years ago to Delta 767 climbing out of LAX.

Seems Passengers would not have noticed as the fall was not too steep and speed increased rather than stalling...Can experts narrate what exactly would have happpned ?

I see the airplane first flew on March 12th, and was delivered to SG on March 31st. So glad that Airbus took their own sweet time to fully test this aircraft before allowing passengers aboard.

I wish Airbus would make the "computer" a tool and render control of the aircraft to pilots.

Amazing thank God every one sad ok.

Though A330 is certified to fly 4 extra hours when loses an engine to me the pilot should have diverted to the nearest airport to avoid any possible disaster.Why put passengars'life on the line when pilot has the final say either to land or otherwise?

You are referring to flight 242 departing Huntsville, Al, in route to ATL on Aprill 4, 1977. These types of tragedies are very rare today due to far better power plants and better weather routing by airline dispatch personnel. The cause of flight 242 going down was attributed to extreme weather producing rain at the rate of eight to ten inches an hour and large hail being ingested into the engines. The flight level was somewhere around 16,000 feet at the time of the engine failures and restarts were impossible for the P&W 72 engines. Today's engines are capable of water ingestion of greater than twelve inches an hour, greatly due to the higher bypass ratio of today's power plants. In short, this flight disaster could have been avoided with better weather information to the flight crew. The section of Hwy 92 still has a brass placket at the crash site listing all those who lost their lives that day in New Hope, GA. This accident is still used as an example for ATP flight training today.

Are these the same engines as on the A400 that lost power and crashed?

Always Rolls Royce engines having these flame-out issues.

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

Passenger Jet Loses Power, Drops 2.5 Miles

Singapore Airlines says it's investigating how one of its jets suffered a loss of power in both of its engines over the weekend and descended 13,000 feet—nearly 2.5 miles—before regaining altitude en route from Singapore to Shanghai.

http://www.newser.com/story/207467/passenger-jet-loses-power-drops-25-miles.html?utm_source=9at9&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20150528

I saw a news report stating that the aircraft in question was only a year old,basically brand new ..they also said after an inspection, etcetera, the aircraft was put back into service..holy cow! I am not a pilot but I do know large aircraft are not made to be "gliders"..one engine operating is manageable..2 engines not operating is a scary thought!!

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

Singapore Airlines A330 lost twin engine power during flight

A Singapore Airlines Airbus A330-300 jetliner, operating commercial flight ‪SQ836 on May 23, lost power on both engines over south-east of Hong Kong

http://www.aviationanalysis.net/2015/05/singapore-airlines-a330-loses-engine-power.html

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

airbus A330 Flies For 25 Minutes Over The Pacific With Both Engines Out

Brand new iron shuts down over the Pacific.....YIKES!

http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/airbus-a330-flies-for-25-minutes-over-the-pacific-with-1708736517