Originally Posted by
megan
There was the time a 727 mast heater failed and ice built up, when the ice came off it went into No 3 engine causing spool lock which made the engine separate from the airframe.
I remember it a bit differently - I thought it was 'blue ice' from a leaking lav service panel.
But I suppose it really doesn't matter much in the end (aside from corrective action at the time).
Mildly humorous story about that incident - apparently there was an engineer type sitting near the #3 engine - he heard a bang and looked out the window and saw that the engine was gone! So he called a flight attendant over and said 'WE JUST LOST AN ENGINE' - the flight attendant started with the standard response that it's not uncommon to shut down an engine - the aircraft can still fly fine when the engineer stopped her and said 'NO! The engine is GONE' and pointed to the window. The FA looked out the window, gasped, and headed for the flight deck.
Meanwhile the pilots had gotten some warnings about the engine - pulled the fire handle and figured they were done. The FA came in an told them the engine was GONE - so the flight engineer went back and looked. Shocked, he returned to the flight deck and one of the pilots came back and looked...
Back in the flight deck, they decided the aircraft was still flying just fine, so they continued on to their destination...