All Engines-out Landing Due to Fuel Exhaustion - Air Transat, 24 August2001

Corky Scott
:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:23:11 GMT, James Robinson
wrote:

It was an Eastern Airlines L-1011, and it landed with one engine
operating. (It had been shut down earlier as a precaution, but
restarted.) The o-rings were left off the engine's chip detectors.

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1984/AAR8404.htm

That isn't how my uncle, who was an Eastern Airlines check pilot
described it to me. He could have been mistaken of course, or I could
be remembering what he told me incorrectly.

He told me that the mechanics and the parts people had developed a
kind of non standard in-house procedure when it came to changing the
oil. Normally when the oil was changed in the engines, the procedure
required that the plug and O-ring be replaced, and this is what the
mechanics did routinely. But the parts counter guy was being helpful
and had gotten into the habit of pre-installing the O-rings for the
mechanics so that they did not have to bother.

On the day of the incident, or the day before, the aircraft was
serviced and the oil changed in all three engines. Per the routine,
the plugs were replaced. But this time when the mechanic walked to
the parts counter, there were no plugs ready for pickup. So the parts
guy had to walk back and get the plugs for the mechanic out of a bin.
This broke the routine and he forgot to get the O-rings as well. The
mechanic, used to them already being on, forgot to check for their
presence or ask for them. He had not had to ask for them for a long
time.

So the plugs went in without the O-rings installed.

The way the flight was described to me by my uncle, the airplane
climbed out routinely and at the altitude described in the above url,
one of the engines showed low oil pressure. So they shut it down and
I think they continued on as the destination was almost equally close
as Miami. A few seconds later however a second engine showed low oil
pressure and they shut that one down too and immediately turned back
towards Miami.

Feeling that whatever had happened to the first two engines could
affect the third one, they shut the last one down as a precaution and
glided towards the airport. Their intent was to save it for use when
they arrived at Miami.

As they approached Miami, they successfully restarted the engine that
had been running last and landed under power. Some of the passengers
immediately boarded another airplane to continue their flight, others
were more skittish and did not.

That's how it was described to me. My uncle's name was John Warner,
no longer with us now. He also told me the DC-3 hanging in the
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum was very familiar to him, he'd flown
it thousands of hours.

Fairly accurate except for the bit where hey shut down the second and third
because of low oil pressure. Those both failed and they were frantically
trying to get anything going after that. The one that started for them was
the one they had shut down first.


Bertie

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