Emirates A340 engine/snow problem at Munich 5th March

[south coast]

Emirates in Munich on Sunday...

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was taxi-ing behind emirates on sunday when they had an auto-shut down, as said by them over the radio...

it looked like from behind the engine went through high snow build up on the side of the taxi ways...big white clouds, we thought snow being blasted by jet blast, but would seems being digetsed by engine...

anyhow, anyone know the details of this, or what the outcome was...?

would snow going through a big fan engine cause structual failure?

[captjns]

If there were chunks of ice involved.

[AlphaWhiskyRomeo]

Just out of interest, how does water or soft ice being ingested into an engine affect combustion/thrust?

[rotornut]

YES! I was in a Bell 206 that had a flameout because of snow injestion. I was lucky not to break my back as it happened close to the ground. The Allison turboshaft engine apparently picked up a chunk of snow inside the cowling as the helicopter had been left outside in a snow storm.

[Belgique]

So, was it an A340-300? or what?

[captjns]

Depending on the density of the object being injeseted into the engine can cause severe disruption of airflow.

[Flintstone]

It was snow that had been ploughed from the taxiway so was relatively dense. It was pretty spectacular too. Big cloud of blown snow, the engine must have been dragged through the snowbank for a good 100 feet or more wouldn't you say south coast?

I felt sorry for the crew when they said something like "Our engine's just performed an auto-shutdown and we don't know why".

[spannersatcx]

would snow going through a big fan engine cause structual failure that wouldn't be a 340 then!:p

[lomapaseo]

Packed snow and ice is the big problem for causing damage even at taxi rpms, it's like sticking a broom into the fan.

Ingested fresh snow (not ice encrusted) should not be a problem until it fills the inlet to about 20% of the ingested air. So for the event mentioned you would have to figure out how many pounds of snow per second and compare that to how many pounds of air.

[barit1]

Just a guess, but at/near idle the engine might not have too much physical damage - mostly fan dings. The inlet cowl might have major damage though.

And at that condition (idle) the very high water content could indeed cause a flameout in some engine types. (Still not sure if this was an A343/CFM56 or A345/RR)

[what_goes_up]

most probably it was a A332 RR Trent 772

[vfenext]

Spanneratcx, You are obviously not familiar with the engines on an 340-500 then!:p

[sky330]

"would snow going through a big fan engine cause structual failure"

A few years ago, a central europe airport had the brilliant idea to clean the runway of snow by pushing it on the side of it. Our first b747 coming in the early morning hours put full reverse after touch-down (braking action reported on the low side).

Jet blast from reverse lift the snow and engines ingested it. Engines 1 and 4 severely damaged nearly beyond repairs. Ops not to happy about it....

[RatherBeFlying]

Besides the aforementioned effects of compaction from ploughing, there will be all sorts of cement, asphalt and seam sealer fragments along with chunks from the abrading snowplough blades to add grit to the poor bird's gizzard:yuk: