MERGED: Air Asia Turnback Perth 25 Jun 17
 

AirAsia flight returns to Perth due to 'technical issue', passenger says 'blade came off turbine'

AirAsia flight returns to Perth due to 'technical issue', passenger says 'blade came off turbine' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Good job on the capt!!!

What was his English like?

Another A330 with engine failure.
 

Returned safely to Perth.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-25/airasia-flight-forced-to-turn-back-to-perth-technical-issue/8649990?pfmredir=sm

Looks like, after the initial failure, a lot of engineering technology and training did exactly what it was supposed to do.

It looks like they had lost a fan blade, and that the unbalanced wind milling engine was causing the vibration. What does that do to the airframe?! It's getting quite a pounding. Would that knock a few hours off the fatigue life?

The said carrier has had questionable standards in regards to maintenance in the past (stuff that just shouldn't happen) so I look forward to reading this Australian investigation along with the other half dozen.

Land at the closest suitable airport?
 

Were there no suitable closer airports than Perth?

I won't believe this is real until a bonafide expert such as GT weighs in.

It's in his home turf after all.

Passenger said a turbine blade came off, did they google that?

Video from onboard shows a severe vibration.
That says to me that the engine wasn't shut down.
Why would the crew continue to run an engine with that vibration?
I realise that 2 is better than 1 but the vibration could cause other damage?

Morno: 5 stars. Bravo!

Channel 9 tells how passengers were asked to pray.............................WTF!:(

The crew said there was a turbine blade failure, after they had landed. Why didn't they shut down the out of balance engine? If it had have ripped off the wing it could have caused all sorts of catastrophic damage.
Air Asia - enough said...

Exmouth definitely closer.
Now lets talk about what defines "suitable" again.

Engine not shut down ???
 

OttoL and ronthefisherman: The engine would have been shut down. It would have continued to "windmill" and would not have been producing any thrust. There is no means of stopping the engine from continuing to rotate whilst ever there is sufficient airflow through the fan section to drive the engine.

Anyone seen the Flightradar24 track? They must have been not far from Learmonth if they were an hour or so into the flight.

Learmonth was pretty close to the diversion point and it has a 3000m runway. However is literally in the middle of no where. Good luck if you need medical attention for PAX, and then there's the whole hassle of getting engineering support to such a remote location. Unless you need to get the aircraft on the ground right now, Perth is a better option.

However, single engine in a twin is a land at nearest suitable situation, and with no catastrophic event PAX injurys are likely to be non existent. I'm not saying they made the wrong decision, but had it being my aircraft the Learmonth decision would have being heavily considered.

From that article - "[Crew] said 'I hope you all say a prayer, I'll be saying a prayer too".
Wow ... is that a standard thing to say to calm people ?

Looks like turn back occurred about 1:20 into flight; then 1:45'ish for return to Perth
Interesting that:

a) he peaked, briefly, at 511 knots while getting down to 24000 ft
b) speed while still in climb peaked at 491 kt before slowly reducing to 433 in level flight immediately before the failure
Any chance he had been throttling back while chasing a vibration alarm?

All this from FR24 - so not sure what it is really showing me.

I have flown two airlines that invoked prayers as part of the pre-flight.
Invocation card in the back of the seat.

It's showing you groundspeed. So unless you know the winds aloft, you can't really draw any conclusions.