Oh FFS.......

Without getting into religious debate, if "god" the all-seeing omnipresent entity can get them out of trouble, doesn't it stand to reason that it was "god" that put in that situation to begin with?

...In any case, prayer isn't what saves a plane in trouble - its good airmanship. Well done to the pilot for getting the plane back on the ground safely but I doubt it had anything to do with any of the prayers of the pilot or pax.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but YPLM has very little in the way of emergency/ARFF resources, let alone ability to handle PAX etc. I've never flown an A330 so can't comment on it from a type specific point of view, but Learmonth can't have been the ideal place to land if it was safe to go elsewhere.

Whether it was safe or not I'll leave up to the experts.

Surely it's the IAS you want to reduce- that's what's driving the windmilling. Stay up high if you've decided you want to get back to PH in a reasonable time at low IAS but reasonable TAS.

My lack of religious belief contrasted with a firm grip on reality would tell me not to get on the damned thing in the first place.If you can't afford the extra 200 bucks - don't go.

Mixing religion with aviation. Now there's an oxymoron. Returning to Perth was questionable when Learmonth was so close. You must also consider the possibility of any further degradation of the aircraft systems. The longer the exposure the greater the risk. From the video the vibration was significant. It was severe engine damage.......LAND at the nearest suitable.

It would be interesting to compare the list of indiscretions that Tiger did in the lead up to them being grounded, versus those of Air Asia in Australia over the past few years.

it's only severe engine damage to the pilot if it matches the definition in his training.

The vibration that is shaking things is a function of specific frequencies, higher speed would likely be less vibration.

There is no indication that critical aircraft structures are involved.

best we await the pilot report of sensed vibration vs AC speed points before judging how soon he should have landed.

The issue seems to be that the aircraft is now down to a single engine, and has flown past a perfectly suitable alternate airport. Yes, he "could" continue on one engine to Perth, but what if he lost the other one? Not unheard of. Better to be safe on the ground nearby than in the air hundreds of kms from your destination and then there is that silence . . .

Don't take it personally, yours was the last post mentioning religion and I simply replied to that. If indeed the Captain was/is Muslim, he has been a Muslim longer than he has been a pilot. Some comments lack understanding and appreciation of other's religion and life. Islam is also a way of life and there are some fundamental misunderstandings of Islam and being a Muslim.

There are some remarkably bad takes here. Many implying this was a simple decision and 'obviously' the wrong one was made.

Why is YPLM automatically considered by many as nearest suitable? It's isolated, limited RFF, limited hospital facilities, limited ATC, etc They weren't flying a Cessna. The AirAsia guys are thinking about all that and also considering Customs, hotels, maintenance and on it goes. Not to mention that the aeroplane is perfectly capable of flying on one engine. Many here are comfortable because they understand what it would be like at Learmonth (or somewhere similar in Oz) But it wouldn't have been that simple to these guys.

Take this scenario:
400nm out of Manilla an engine fails. 200nm ahead is an uncontrolled/isolated airport with few facilities. You've never been to this airport but heard about it and it's listed as an emergency in your company's manual. Manilla is about an hour behind you but that's a destination with all the bells and whistles. About half way back to Manilla there's a small airport you COULD use if absolutely necessary just for a bit of concrete if it gets very quiet all of a sudden.

It's a 'no-brainer' that you'd land at that isolated airport 200nm ahead? OK. Unbelievably, you stuff up the single engine landing (undoubtedly your first ever on the A330 outside a sim) into the isolated airport and end up with a collapsed gear off the end of the runway followed by a fire. Now you're evacuating with little support and virtually no medical assistance. Multiple fatalities. I can see the pprune thread now...

Interesting thread single engine vs two engine.

SE cut and dry = land át nearest suitable airport!

Define suitable? 5000ft elevation with terrain issues vs 10 min further on at sea level and no terrain?

Nearly SE, ie running one engine at less than full thrust due to a problem, it doesn't say land at nearest suitable airport because airlines didn't want that in a checklist (managment like grey areas they can manoeuvre here)

But consider one engine that can only produce 50% thrust and the other engine going from 100% thrust to 0% you will not maintain altitude !!

So consider landing at nearest suitable airport!!

Management via ACARS or Sat Phone will ask you to go to an airport that's suitable for them, and if it goes wrong it's your arse and remember they only asked you, not told you!

The captain on the Swiss 777 did the right thing, landed in the snow in the middle of winter in northern Canada and handed the companies broken aircraft back to them to sort out their own problems.

Surprised no one has mentioned the cockpit gradient that is so often referred to with Asian carriers. The Captain made a decision based upon experience and knowledge and safely got it on the deck. If it was a crash a lot would still pile **** on him. Professional respect anyone???

Rolls Royce Engines Shaking?
 

Pretty unprofessional on the pilots part to suggest prayer...

On local news coverage the passengers hears a loud bang, followed by the vibrations.

The local news went on to say an engine 'seized', though that would not seem consistent with shaking continuing on for over 90 minutes.

Would have though shutting down the engine would be sufficient to stop the shaking though...

Anyone have some actual information as to what happened?

From :

The Australian Article

Brenton Atkinson said the plane started vibrating and shaking after what sounded like a small explosion.

“It was literally like you were sitting on top of a washing machine,” he told ABC radio.

“You could see the engine out the window which was really shaking on the wing.

“It was a little unnerving, everyone handled it pretty well, no one freaked out too much.”

Concours 77 has just updated an old saying to 'A You Tube is worth a thousand words' It was an excellent demonstration of a serious problem.http://cdn.pprune.org/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

The Electra had many changes after the fatal inflight wing separation, one change was the advance of phasing the propellers to prevent vibration (prevent multiple blades from crossing the leading edge at the same time).

Air Asia:
I would suspect if the Captain kept the damaged engine running this may produce the vibration seen in the film vs it shut down.

When dealing with Operations at certain airlines information can be demanding to land the aircraft at the base of operations. Obviously you have an engine change but I would be very concerned over continuing a flight with excessive vibration. One person mentioned it was worse than a helicopter, I flew in plenty of those contraptions however never to experience what was referred. Severe vibration can damage all aircraft. I would think the vibration in the center of the aircraft where the engine is mounted is less vibration vs the cockpit. I experienced a moderate vibration from a worn out rudder bellcrank sperical bearing that came on while climbing out of FL 240 up to FL 390. I stopped climb and slowed down. Time to return back to where we started from, Dubai, but the Captain feels we can and should continue to Shanghai? Captain if you walk all the way back to the pressure bulkhead and your ok with this vibration I'm ok with it also. He returns and his eyeballs are wide open. I then inform him that we'll have to dump fuel. He calls operations and next thing we get a phone call from operations and then messages on our printer stating that the head of training has blessed us with a procedure of landing overweight. Really? Why do operations get involved making this **** up? We didn't declare an emergency, were not on fire. We entered an altitude and speed range where the vibration occured, we arrested it and returned but dumped fuel bring us within proper landing weight (limitations). Worked all the checklists and went to the hotel. The tail of a B744 is 64' and they didn't have proper checks on the tail because of the necessity of having a vertical stand. They changed the sperical bearing and problem solved. People that carry broken aircraft screw it up for the next crew. Continuing to China could have brought the flight control into a flutter. Was it a balance weight missing. You don't know.

He not only told the passengers that they better start praying, but he also said that he himself was going to pray as well.
What happened to "relying on your training and experience"?
What happened to trusting the redundancy of the airplane design?
By the way, why would an aircraft manufacturer build in any redundancy, if everything is decided by a higher power anyway?
Seriously. We (humanity) need to start to re-evaluate this reliance on any gods asap.

While I agree, this has more to do with culture than religion.

I do not think praying is unprofessional,some people believe in an almighty. If praying helps relieve their stress a bit let them be.

For the second part, shutting down a damaged engine is no guarantee the vibrations will stop. A damaged engine will probably be out of balance and windmilling in the airflow causing the vibrations to continue.

Aviation Herald says "a blade" fractured - no mention of location (fan, compressor, turbine). Engine core ingested the blade, breaking other parts.

Engine was shut down, but 1) it might still freewheel in the slipstream, and/or 2) the original vibrations may have shaken something else loose (nacelle, pylon, inlet lining) that also rattled and vibrated in the airstream.

Any given engine failure may produce its own pattern of damage and "knock-on" effects. 90 minutes of shaking after shutting down an engine is not something I've encountered (outside of The High and the Mighty) - but someone probably has.

Don't all ME carriers say (show) a prayer before every take off on IFE screens?

Indeed, it would not have been an easy decision for the crew.
But, just taking a few of your comments:

It's isolated. - No, its remote, not isolated.
Limited RFF - OK. Not as good as Perth.
Limited hospital facilities - OK again, Definitely less than Perth
Limited ATC - do you mean eyes in the tower? Not too much of that around these days.
- But it is a military air base, albeit little-used. Still, it can't be too bad.
- countered by "Limited traffic to contend with (make that zero traffic)".
Customs - not sure what's available. But nobody's going to want to wander off too far at Exmouth.
Hotels - yes limited, but back up transport (road or air) from Perth or even another aircraft out of Malaysia would be relatively simple.
Maintenance - yep, everything would need to be brought in. Very inconvenient.
The aeroplane is perfectly capable of flying on one engine - hmmm, I would not have used the word "perfectly".

But on the other hand you do have:

Proximiity - 165 nm vs 465 nm. 30 minutes vs 1:50. All of it in descent from 24,000. He MAY have had to lose some fuel.
10,000 ft x 150 ft runway - let's not compare it to a dirt strip in the Philipines, eh.
- U.S. B-52's use this airbase when necessary.
It IS the primary alternate for Perth for flights out of SE Asia and for flights to Sydney, Melbourne, etc coming in from M-E.
It would not have been the first diversion of a heavy to Learmonth. As with Iqualuvit, 300 people unexpectedly arriving in the middle of the night would be a challenge, but not insurmountable.

As for "Take this scenario ......." - No thanks. Not comparable.

Never seen one on Emirates

If the aircraft landed and blocked the runway I would definitely say LM is isolated. It's at least a 2 hour drive from Carnarvon which has a small runway really. It's about 2.5hours from OLW which is probably the closest larger runway, or 5 hours from KA. KA has the only ARFF in the area unless the military happen to be there (they aren't at the moment). Otherwise Exmouth would be volunteer Firefighters. The town is much smaller than KA so at best they have 2 trucks would be my guess. The hospital is tiny so other than the physical dimensions of the place it doesn't tick many other boxes.

Admittedly PC12's and the like could get into EXM strip but still.

The only thing they have in bucket loads is accommodation, but that may be difficult this time of the year.

Royal Brunei, whilst not ME, do have a prayer before departure.

We could fly PER-SIN as either ETOPS or non ETOPS, with a slight route variation and a few minutes additional flight time removing the extra requirements.

Here is an interesting scenario for us all. A blade separated and based on their training and information available to them they decided to return to Perth. This crew appear to have got away with their decision. So we have to leave them alone. But now we have the luxury of an incident where nobody got hurt and add to our knowledge. RR and Airbus should now tell us if there is any technical reason if this was a good plan or not. Then, we can add this information into our knowledge banks and make better decisions in the future.

Personally, I would have left the plane and passengers in the middle of nowhere. If you run an airline that flies over remote parts of the world you must expect that every now and again your aircraft and passengers might end up in the middle of it.

PM

Video on Nine just now showing the shaking both inside the cabin and the engine on the wing oscillating on the pylon while in flight is just extraordinary.
Surely something that persistent and significant has got to fatigue the airframe?

Just a small point. It may have been longer to PH but there are other aerodromes enroute. Geraldton would've been equidistant from turnaround as Learmonth. Geraldton is some change under 2000m x 45m (although not ideal it is certainly adequate). Then Gin Gin at 1830m x 45m and Pearce. PIC had other options enroute to PH.

If they were doing a return to base then reduction of fuel load is effectively done, not by the journalists' favourite "dumping fuel", but by spooling up the engines and extending the speedbrakes.

Have had this on a 767 which had to divert. There is some vibration associated with this.

Etihad do - the "Traveller's Prayer" I think it is called.

I don't think Airbus would agree with the commercial aspects listed above. Suitable airports come back to runway length and weather. Engineers would have you fly past 1000 airports if it made their life easier.....

"In selecting the nearest suitable airport, the pilot-in-command should consider the suitability of nearby airports in terms of facilities and weather and their proximity to the airplane position. The pilot-in-command may determine, based on the nature of the situation and an examination of the relevant factors, that the safest course of action is to divert to a more distant airport than the nearest airport. For example, there is not necessarily a requirement to spiral down to the airport nearest the airplane's present position if, in the judgment of the pilot-in-command, it would require equal or less time to continue to another nearby airport."

You armchair experts need to shut up....

My employer only provides airport (JEPPESEN ) data on destination, alternates and occasional enroute Airports. An emergency could mean some airports are not considered due no information. LCC model!!!

Qantas also weren't flying a Cessna, but it didn't stop them going to YPLM after an incident. :eek:

Same aircraft type (A330) and in the same area as well. :eek:

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...-2008-070.aspx

And what is that a quote from?

===============
Well if you take the time to read the above mentioned report...not the same circumstance
''On 7 October 2008, an Airbus A330-303 aircraft, registered VH-QPA and operated as Qantas flight 72, departed Singapore on a scheduled passenger transport service to Perth, Western Australia. While the aircraft was in cruise at 37,000 ft, one of the aircraft's three air data inertial reference units (ADIRUs) started outputting intermittent, incorrect values (spikes) on all flight parameters to other aircraft systems. Two minutes later, in response to spikes in angle of attack (AOA) data, the aircraft's flight control primary computers (FCPCs) commanded the aircraft to pitch down. At least 110 of the 303 passengers and nine of the 12 crew members were injured; 12 of the occupants were seriously injured and another 39 received hospital medical treatment.''

''At 1240:28, while the aircraft was cruising at 37,000 ft, the autopilot disconnected. That was accompanied by various aircraft system failure indications. At 1242:27, while the crew was evaluating the situation, the aircraft abruptly pitched nose-down. The aircraft reached a maximum pitch angle of about 8.4 degrees nose-down, and descended 650 ft during the event. After returning the aircraft to 37,000 ft, the crew commenced actions to deal with multiple failure messages. At 1245:08, the aircraft commenced a second uncommanded pitch-down event. The aircraft reached a maximum pitch angle of about 3.5 degrees nose-down, and descended about 400 ft during this second event.
At 1249, the crew made a PAN emergency broadcast to air traffic control, and requested a clearance to divert to and track direct to Learmonth. At 1254, after receiving advice from the cabin crew of several serious injuries, the crew declared a MAYDAY. The aircraft subsequently landed at Learmonth at 1350.''

I certainly would not want to be on that airframe again until the entire pylon was changed and a full inspection of the wing box and pylon attach points.