A Fokker 27 loses it's propeller at take-off in Paris (CDG)
 

Un avion postal atterrit en urgence à Roissy après la perte d'un bout d'hélice - Société - MYTF1News

Serious damage to the cabin, aparently.

Being reported as an F-27 of Europe Airpost, which is strange as they only fly 737s.

Possibly one of MiniLiner's aircraft, which have operated FPO services in the past.

Aircraft owned by Miniliner, Italy.


Propeller falls off Paris plane and chops hole in fuselage – The Connexion

Ha Ha, "thousands of RPM " "Engine exploded"

The exesses of Press hyperbole are alive and well in ""la Belle France" (but it's a rag aimed at the expat market, note.:\

IIRC the Dart does 15000 rpm at T.O. and with a 10 : 1 reduction the prop will be doing 1500 rpm.

Just like the good old days - how many DC-7 props are there at the bottom of the Atlantic?

Lost propeller
 

I've just heard that the GTA (Gendarmerie du Transport Aérien) is asking that, if people find a (part of a)propeller in their garden or their kitchen to contact them immediately

Which runway was used ? Just to know where to give a look... ;)

It would be interesting to learn whether the whole propeller detached, or whether a blade detached/broke initially, perhaps followed by the others in consequence due to the loads from imbalance.

It sounds as though it was a blade; if the whole propeller assembly fell off, I cannot see it "going through the cabin" although I'm finding it hard to picture what it would do instead.

An "explosion" of the engine, if that really happened before the propeller (or blade) came off, could only have been an uncontained turbine disintegration; I can't think of any other event that could be called an "explosion".

But the F27 has, if I recall correctly, a containment ring, and there is no real reason why the prop should detach, or a blade break, as a result of turbine disintegration.

So I wonder if the "explosion" is just journalese for "it all fell apart with a bang", referring to the propeller/blade loss itself?

If it had been a tensile failure/release of the prop shaft, the whole prop would likely have shot straight ahead, missing the aircraft completely. There is some precedent for this.

Most any other mode (broken blade, gear case breakage, etc.) could release parts in the plane of rotation, penetrating the fuselage. This could cause enough imbalance in the core engine that massive rotor/stator clashes could happen, causing stalls/surges that would seem "explosive".

They were fortunate. I lost a friend on this one. If they had been able to retract the gear and if the stew hadn't moved the pax to the back of the airplane, the outcome may have been different. There were at least two other similar accidents, to my knowledge.

QB 255.

Big difference between an engine impeller and an aircraft propeller blade.

Nevertheless both are quite likely to penetrate a fuselage if they break apart.

Whole single blade losses tend to be the worst since they often break the gearbox and allow the remaining prop assy and gear box to linger about for awhile and end up on the wing leading edge surface.

I can't possibly tell from a news article what actually broke first

A Fokker loses its propeller in France...and an ATR of Vietnam Airlines looses its Nosewheel in Da Nang...all the entire fleet is now grounded until anyone get answers...:rolleyes:

According to the article the engine exploded and the prop departed the aircraft. The police are still looking for the four-bladed propeller and the GTA from Roissy are looking for witnesses and all or part of the propeller or any debris that will help understand the causes and circumstances of the accident.

The QB crew may also have been able to come around and land but for several reasons.The weather at the time was 300 X 1/2 -SN. They took off on R06 and lost the engine right at rotation. The prop and nose casing was found on the runway. Debris had penetrated the DC electrical panel behind the co-pilot seat and they were unable to raised the gear plus the lower cowling had come unfastened and had swung down and lodged against the MLG drag strut. Added to that the stew moved some passengers from the right to the left side of the aircraft - away from the fire - and in doing so the aft C of G was exceeded. They were attempting a split assed right turn to remain visual and come around and land on R30, the threshold of which was co-located with R06 at the time. They almost made it, they crashed just short of the R30 approach lights.

The French article would seem to indicate that there were no passengers on board the postal freight F27.
One anomaly that existed between F27 operations in Europe and in Africa is that water methanol never seemed to be carried in Europe and in the UK. I wonder if you can even find it these days?
If WM were ever to find its way on board, in at least one major UK F27 operator, the Ops manual directions for its use were quite in contradiction to the Fokker F27 manual where, if memory serves, all approaches were made with WM selected ON in order to furnish max power for a go around. Take offs were wet or dry of course and the dichotomy then lay, in the event of catastrophic engine failure, in having to reduce power on the operational engine to below 14,700RPM(??) engage WM and then power up again to max.
Useful stuff that, which in moderation gave an added boost to a V8 car engine.

I think Air UK used to carry watermeth in summer on the UK East Coast routes, Norwich, Humberside, Edinburgh, Aberdeen?

I think you may want to check your sources.

Jersey European carried w/m all of the time. They did operate the 500 series which were heavier. Difficult for most of the year to operate without it at places like Belfast City,Leeds and Southampton with heavy loads.

Dart engine, catastrophic failure on take off
 

AAIB report on HS748 G-OJEM at Stansted 1998, worth a read regarding uncontained failure of RR Dart engine on take off

A Fokker 27 loses it's propeller at take-off in LFPG
 

Air UK used to put water methanol in the F27s at STN although never has bad as humping all that demin water in the hold of the BAF 1-11s for the return leg!

Seems there have been quite a few of those Dart failures. At my outfit, we had one in the early eighties, as far as I can recall the low speed impeller on the left engine disintegrated as the gear was being retracted, the left gear stopped about 2/3 of the way up and was stuck that way. Both the nose gear and right main gear fully retracted which is proably what saved the aircraft. The forward part of the engine and propeller tilted forward at an angle and was really hanging on by a thread. Aircraft landed safely.

I never liked the Fokker F27. Everything that possibly could break/fail did,
electrics and pneumatics were crap. :ugh:

I'm not a pilot but travelled many times to Guernsey on Darts in the 70's and had some interesting experiences. Went through a tropical storm though in N Queensland in one in the eighties and everything internal fell off including door to cockpit, but landed safely. If you like excitement travel on them.

Prop found ...
Et soudain l?avion perd une pale d?hélice - 26/10/2013 - leParisien.fr
Le Mesnil-Amelot (Seine-et-Marne) yesterday. The plane had just taken off when the accident occurred. The first blade was found in an orchard 2 km of the track, while the other part of the engine and were recovered in a cornfield near the detention center

It's a long time ago, but I logged ten years and 6,000 hours with AirUK on the F27. IIRC we carried water-meth all the time, and if the old brain cells aren't totally dead, 15 gal per side. Two take-offs @ 6gal and one go-around @ 3gal.

Disagree. Treat the old girl properly and she'd take you through anything.

...and at SOU, JER, GCI, ABZ and everywhere else there were engineers. At SOU and GCI it had to be used on most take-offs and at other stations it all depended. From memory, Herod's figures are about right and we regularly had to account for W/M in order not to exceed our MLW. But I think reliability was questionable. The age of these things meant that tailplanes became loose (G-BYOD), the pneums escaped, spiders, rats and flies got trapped in places you never knew existed. The engines were thirsty (even Mod 1830) but reasonably reliable but overall, they were somewhat over-built. I'm therefore quite shocked to hear one has shed a prop.

The only time we ever armed W/M on approach was if we would have been WAT limited on a missed approach but since our max landing weight was 40,000 lbs that would have been a rare occurrence. Mind you, this was the Fairchild built machine with RDa529 engines and not the Fokker aircraft.

Agreed. We operated at temperatures that sometimes dipped below -40 on the ground and the airplane always served us in good stead. Nordair ran the lateral DEW Line resupply out of Frobisher Bay with the Fairchild 227 for years, with the airplane never seeing the inside of a hangar for two weeks at a time. As for the RR Dart, the only thing it had trouble digesting was a tungsten steel shroud nut. :p

Aahh Pigboat, vital difference between the F227 and the Fokker F27 was the hydraulics vs the pneumatic system especially where you were operating. The pneumatics did not like cold weather! Nor did it heat up very well up front, sometimes sitting with blankets up front in the Arctic!

You mean the 227 did not have pneumatically operated gear, nosewheel steering and brakes? :confused:

Well apologies if I am incorrect but I actually thought the Fairchilds had a hydraulic system for these. Never flew them, but we used the US Airways Fairchild simulator in Pittsburgh. Very different to say the least, but it has been 28 years since I left that thing.

Trust me, l used to be a vicar, that heap belongs to WDL freshly dug up

from it`s graveyard in Cologne.

Seems it didn`t go too well.

Some Fairchilds had hydraulic nose wheel steering, there was a little reservoir attached to the steering unit. That may have been the case with the 227, I never flew them. The handful of F-27's I did fly all had the Kidde pneumatic system. The three 227's Nordair operated went to Malmo Aviation.

We also used USAir in PIT. If that Howard Johnson's motel across from the old terminal could talk I'm sure it would have some interesting tales. :D

I totally agree, I did over 2000hrs on them with Air Anglia (which became Air UK) in the mid 70s and never had any trouble. However having said that, an F27 today would be getting a little long in the tooth.

Interesting to see what else came off with the prop, photograph seems to show the gearbox and other mangled bits, three blades visable.

45 years old.

45 years old, to be precise, in this case.

The Dart engine on the HS 748 that exploded at STN was 37 years old!

It would seem that a blade came off, followed by the remainder of the whole assembly. Is that a valid conclusion?

If so, was the separation of the remaining assembly the result of the blade coming off, and nothing else, or was there a single cause for the whole incident?

The F27s I knew (400/600s) were roundly abused on demanding rough field operations, short sectors, high temperatures and humidity, and rarely let us down.

I suspect that recovering from the loss of a blade through the cabin followed by the loss of the remainder of the prop and part of the engine, and then making a successful approach and landing, was a quite challenging piece of flying that may not have been practised in a SIM, but was the outcome of years of experience and the skills acquired in that way.

Looks like this F27 has done this job in France all of its life. We shall have to wait for the investigation report.

seems way too much for a prop blade failure

Certainly. Here is a picture of the fuselage:

https://twitter.com/AviationSafety/s.../photo/1/large

ASN Aircraft accident Fokker F-27 Friendship 500F I-MLVT Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG)

Cheers :cool: