747-200F down in Bogota ?

[pacplyer]

Well,

Loyalty to your carrier is indeed an admirable quality; CK was wise to hire you Guppy. I have no doubt you're a fine employee and a great pilot. But multiple posters have commented on the high numbers of incidents that they were personally aware of while flying there. One hears one report, one tends to dismiss it. One hear another, one might also ignore it. But one hears several more and then you start to wonder.... it begs the question: is this happening at other carriers? Is this happening to other models of heavy jets in operation? Surely, migrating birds and bad fuel don't just cross paths with one model of aircraft: the B-747-200? The odds of your scenerio: bird ingestion taking out two on one side are remote (but possible.) The odds of bad fuel only being delivered to your carrier and nobody else are also remote imho (but possible.) But your hypothetical defenses are based on what? Worse speculation than what other posters here are correctly focusing on:

There now are two individual Columbian Aviation officials from two independent news sources that state the crew made radio transmission of an engine fire. Pretty bad journalism if they're both wrong, but it's been known to happen.

Were these also JT9D-Q engines in Bogota as was the case of the Brussels crash? That might be a common thread that an investigator would follow if it is the case. It is not unheard of for a carrier to have outsourced engine overhauls to an operation who does them incorrectly.

Those In flight shutdown stats are interesting however, and the poster Kwick was fair to introduce them. I should point out, that I am not aware of any operator using old -Q engines on ETOP's (Extended Twin Engine Overwater Ops) so those numbers are not applicable: one shutdown in twenty years. ETOPs requires meticulous, audited, parts inventory control. I once worked for a carrier who applied for it and was turned down. We therefore were not permitted to be out of range of an alternate for more than XX minutes according to our POI's restriction on us.

IIRC, the 747 (partially due to it's low cycles per block hr) is the single safest commercial airplane ever operated in history (again as rated in deaths/seat/nm; excluding a/c with no appreciable history of course.) Source: AW&ST.

So, I would in fact, consider it unusual for one individual pilot to see four IFSD's in a couple of years as the previous poster relayed, if that information is true.