Freaky sight
I was just driving down the freeway after dropping a co-worker off at the airport, and saw a JAL (or ANA) flight coming in for a landing with smoke (?) streaming out of one of the left-side engines. That was damn freaky. I assume it was smoke, at least… we have low clouds here today, but the color of what was obscuring the back half of the plane was slightly darker and definitely more turbulent.
Freaky freaky. I assume it must be okay though, or we would be reading about it in the headlines. Yikes.
i can’t remember the details, but when you read about how commercial airliners’ performance correlates with which engines are working, it’s pretty crazy. i think it’s something vaguely like: a 747-or-larger aircraft can function correctly with half of its engines off.
and even if all your engines fail, a good pilot apparently can glide a 747 for a good while, like 20 miles or so, enough probably for an emergency descent and landing if you’re not over water.
or i might be making all of this up. i just remember checking into airplane safety out of curiosity a few years ago and being really surprised how fault-tolerant these things are.