"Bigger pair than mine" award goes to...

Tammie Jo Shults, the former Navy Hornet pilot who put a 737 with a blown engine safely on the ground. I listened to the cockpit tapes and brother, that is one cool lady. She sounded like she was ordering lunch she was so calm.

Anybody that thinks all women suffer from the vapors and will run around like headless chickens under stress better think again.

One of the salesmen I deal with told me about that yesterday, having found out about it from his best friend (going way back to high school) who is also a pilot (air force background) and flies with this lady often, they both live in San Antonio and work for Southwest. She did good, that's for certain.

Very good flying in a well made aircraft. She will be remembered for that flight for many years, and maybe a movie.

ANY Mil pilot is who I want to fly with! Period!

I listened to the radio traffic recording(s). I was proud of her. As Louis L'Amour might say, "A woman you could ride the river with."

Makes me feel better about flying when I hear of such complete professionals. The training worked.
I read where she is refusing interviews because she felt she just did her job. Doesn't want attention, just wants to get back to work.

A complete professional who is worth her weight in gold.

Drop dead gorgeous D.I.L. shooting one of our recurves,it hits 37# @ 28",then drops to 35 @ 30.......
She shoots 31" arrows at 30" draw.No one told her she was," just a girl".She is a pleasure to shoot with and is a shooting role model to my Gdaughter......who has been shooting since diapers.

So,there are some amazing women out there,and no they aren't all at TJ Max.

I suspect that she handled the situation much like the gentleman that was flying the 757 that lost the roof section over Hawaii . First she checked the manual under blown/missing engine and when all useful data wasn't useful she flew the airplane .
The first course of action is to get to 10,000 feet or less and set up throttle on the engine/s you do have to maintain controlled flight control response preferably inside the trim limits . Then ask permission for an emergency straight in to the nearest airport that will support the aircraft . Come to a heading set up the flight path , dump any over weight sources , turn on the seat belt lights and advise the flight attendants to give the upright and locked head on your knees speech as the oxy system deployed when the window blew out .

Yep just a competent pilot flying the airplane after an in flight failure .
It's no different than a machist turning off an out of balance machine with a broken mount or tool head , except that 115 other people are counting on you to get it shut down before it eats the machine and part of the shop .

At least there's useful data for engine failure/loss , there isn't for "top down convertible" 757 . By the way that guy was a very down to earth ,"so we threw the book out the window and flew the airplane", kind of guy also . I met him in a hanger in Truckee CA with a TBM and an N3N while I was on a T6 B,C,D job . Glory days indeed .

IIRC the copilot of that Aloha convertible flight was also a female who kept her head on straight and was instrumental in the relatively happy ending of that incident. The Gimli Glider incident will probably always rank at the top of my list of super-human achievements by a pilot.

She did what she was trained and paid to do. Hats off
to the lady!

Paul

She gets a "well done", but the good news is that the 737-700 will climb great on one
engine, so an engine failure is no big deal from a flying qualities and safety situation.
It WILL get you to the airport, they even climb well on one engine, massive excess thrust.

But, really sad for the lady who was killed. I am surprised to see the window knocked out that
far back. I will not sit lined up with the fan unless there are no other seats available, but would have
thought that where she was (at TE of the wing, about 10 rose back from lined up with the fan!)
would have been pretty safe. I would have been wrong.

Wear your seatbelts, reasonably tight, ALL the time. Turbulence and blown out windows do not
come with advanced warning. A friend is a SW pilot, and I want to talk to him about this later,
after they get it all figured out.

I thought the whole fan blew up, but later pix show ONE blade missing. Shredded the entire
containment ring ("shrapnel proof" ring around the fan section). Amazing, although that
blade has a chord of about 8-9" and is about 20" long, so not light, and turning over 5,000 RPMs
at cruise.

As to the convertible Aloha Airlines 737. I saw an interview with the copilot, a female. When the lid blew,
they got an engine failure, lots of lights and buzzers, depressurization (DUH!) and had the cockpit
door blow open, unlatched and partly open. She was busy as hell putting on her O2 mask, securing the
bad engine (the FA they lost went through it), cutting off fuel and electrical, setting up the emergency
descent profile, etc.,etc., etc. She finally had a few seconds to spare, looked over her shoulder through the
cockpit door and SAW BLUE SKY . She said she turned around immediately and the instrument panel
was VERY comforting, it said that they still had a flyable aircraft and she didn't want to look through
that door again until they were on the ground, it scared her too badly. NEVER supposed to be able to
see blue sky through the cockpit door of a 737. NEVER.

Bill

I am still a bit miffed that the explosion was not contained. The containment shielding is extensive and intended to prevent this. Looking at this blade-out test, it does appear that some bits could be ejected forward. The photo a passenger took through the window of the port engine once they were on the ground showed far more nacelle damage than should have happened, though.

Here's a better one:

I have been working on aircraft too long. I wont sit inline with the engines. I also get paranoid flying on an aircraft someone else worked on. Theres a nice skin patch on one of my older aircraft where a blade came off and went through the cabin.

There isnt much holding the nacell panels on. Got a few open at work. Mostly just latches. This is the second massive failure this year on those engines. I will be interested in the report on what caused it.

Long ago Boeing did a lot bird strike testing . NASA built on that testing . Both used air cannon chickens . It was often suggested that after a lengthy run of spectacular windscreen and cabin failures that a mechanic suggested that the NASA engineers would do better if they thawed the chickens first .

I don't recall the specific aircraft now and anything bigger than the Lear 23 or King Air class was outside of my meat an taters , I'm thinking 707 or 727 . The model had an engine set midline through or more specifically within the vertical stabilizer . That engine suffered a failure and the debris cut , as I recall , hydraulic lines and power cables for much of the tail section .

One of the things that I learned from aviation and auto racing that stands out above all else is that you can have all of the shielding and containment you can build in with all sorts ducting and directional failure channels and when stuff comes all undone it will do so by way of that place that you missed , overlooked or ruled as an improbability . 7 for 10 it will be spectacular when it does .

Also weird things happen at 25,000+ ft and become really bizarre above 400 mph .


I knew an air racer once that had a very special war bird . It was a Yak 11 I think . Anyway it was fitted as I recall with a 3350 but it may have been a 2800 ......the displacement isn't important , what is is that during all of the test flights and commutes to shows and races it never gave the slightest hint of heating except a little usually going in to the last lap 72 miles wide open 80-90° 410-20 mph laps and it would show elevated head temps in the last 9 miles pulling 14-16 psi boost . Any never any trouble at Reno or Phoenix , I think they ran in the plains somewhere once also , at a race at Paigne field Washington during qualifying he saw the temp come up a little but almost immediately after he pulled off the course it came back down . Everything was checked and a couple likely to be trouble parts swapped during the first heat race the heating forced him to pull up . Again there was nothing to be found except that there was water in the oil cooler . Long story short the crew after a lot of head scratching got a roll of 1/8" rubber tape or the like and shimmed out the cowling to allow more airflow . The heating was being caused by ice forming an packing up in the trailing edge of the cowl and blocking air flow above 350 mph . Math and visualization says it can't happen , but it did and was .

Back at the engine failure until the part that went through the window or the immediate area is found and ID'd it's as likely to have been burner section parts as compressor blades or an ice chunk .