Originally Posted by SLFStuckInTheBack
I know its not related to the BAA 744 3 eginge saga and I am a mere SLF!
How many places are there in the world that are 5 plus hours away from the nearest safe place to land?
See this link.
http://gc.kls2.com/ It is to an extremely useful site that computes distances between airports and allows you to display world maps that show roughly what portions of the globe are impermissible for flight at various levels of ETOPS. In addition, if you click on the ETOPS Rule-Time text, you are linked to a very useful layman's description of ETOPS restrictions.
Originally Posted by very_interested
Does an ETOPS certification mean that an aircraft is allowed to carry passengers only on a route that never exceeds the time it is ETOPS certified for to land at the nearest suitable runway after an engine fails , or does it mean that an ETOPS certified aircraft can head towards and land at a runway that it can safely reach within the time it is certified for?
Yes I know this overlaps another thread but can anyone enlighten me as to what the rule on ETOPS is. "Lose an engine, land at the nearest" or "lose an engine, land within the certified time"
I believe the ETOPS requirement is that you
must land at the nearest suitable airport once a triggering failure occurs. You are not permitted to overfly a suitable airport and continue to another airport that just happens to be reachable within the ETOPS time limit. But I defer to more knowledgable parties on this issue.