Originally Posted by
wiggy
FWIW I’ll throw this into the debate - one of “our” triples suffered an interesting engine (as in not just a run down) failure in the cruise recently, whilst well over FCOM max landing weight.
Diversion to nearest suitable commenced...fuel dumping commenced..at which point the Fuel jettison system failed.
After suitable review (nature of the engine failure, performance, etc) the crew made the decision to land above max landing weight.
All ended well, aircraft checked out for overweight landing, nothing adverse found
as a result of the landing but the engine was a mess.
Company completely supportive of crew actions/decisions.
Yep - keep doing sensible, safe things as you receive each challenge. If you can, it's good to avoid a high speed landing but you need to balance it all up with what else is going on.
A Cathay Pacific 747-400 taking-off out of the old Kai Tak airport in 1995, on runway 13 out to sea, had an engine blow up, remained on fire in a big way - Captain did a 180 and landed back on runway 31 at 400 tones with 421 on board (max take-off weight) - as they did the 180 the two guys in the back did the performance sums etc etc etc (know your charts well I guess) - all this in around 11 minutes. Amazing ! NEEDS MUST !
I always found the ROD on final approach at those high speeds scary :-)