Actually, I've read that when jets were being developed there was some talk of not having windows in the planes, but people would not have been happy, not being able to see anything outside.

Just imagine being inside a blank tube, not knowing at all where you are. I would find that very disturbing.

It was in Vietnam, at night, on a flight from Saigon to Nha Trang. The plane was a C-130, I believe. We sat on the floor and leaned back on our duffel bags. It was lit only by a few red lights, and of course there were no windows. It was quite disturbing, but Nha Trang was a very pleasant surprise the next morning.

It wasn't any fun.

By that logic, houses shouldn't have windows because they might break during a tornado or hurricane...

That was a joke, btw.

(And, yes, I did get yours, and only then wonder.)

The extra structure that goes onto the inner skins to accommodate
correct moment of inertia along the fuselage adds considerable
weight. Notice airline freighters are windowless.

Hah!

And BTW if Trump wants to see how a suit should look and fit, he should watch Goldfinger. Bond’s gray Anthony Sinclair was the best looking Bond suit ever.

[link:https://m.

In a mint julep you have to muddle the mint. Not artfully arrange them for visual aesthetic effect.

(It's about the only way I can tolerate bourbon.)

Using republican style logic, we must blame Comrade Casino* for this. It's obviously all his fault.

* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

a la Aloha Airlines Flight 243.

Holy crap!

It is quieter in front of the engines, though.

n/m

The “talkies” were in much better shape.

Think "crumple zone". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone

Of course, in a car's crumple zone it's the hamsters in their little wheels that get creamed.

But usually, unless I board early, I don't have a choice

I always stay buckled-up. It could be engine shrapnel, turbulence or snakes on a plane. There's always a good reason to keep the belt on.

...no seatbelt will do much to hold you back.

There has been at least one case when a person wearing a seat belt was sucked out of a plane, but it was because the belt was very loose. A properly tightened seat belt will in almost all instances keep you inside the plane unless the seat goes with you.

The whole front cowling is gone. A memorable flight to say the least.

Best guess?

The turbine is in the middle to aft section of the engine and the fan is in front.

Aaaagh!

She flew F/A-18s in the Navy and was also an instructor pilot. She was calm, cool and collected throughout the ordeal.

Now THAT'S Persisting!!

I'm curious how much of her fit through that window. My shoulders never would have fit.

That's what caused the uncontained failure. Once the blade broke loose, debris was sucked into the engine and a catastrophic failure was inevitable. Reportedly this is not the first fan blade failure Southwest has experienced on one its CFM56 engines. It should have triggered regular blade inspections, but sometimes these components will fail without giving any warning (like a small crack) at all. The military uses a version of this engine, TF-34, in its A-10 and S-3 aircraft.

Link to tweet

Keep you seatbelt securely fastened on an airplane!

Hope nobody on the ground caught that very heavy debris!

the compressor disk let go. Very very rare and might have had a micro crack in it.

You can see the cone of the front fan clearly visible behind the damaged section.

What appears to have happened is that a single blade of the assembly snapped off at the hub. At that rotational speed, that's going to do a lot of damage. Still...modern jet engines are supposedly designed to keep the damage from a broken blade contained.

A fan section coming apart can rip through the fuselage like a machine gun through cardboard.

Jennifer Riordan, a mother-of-two from Albuquerque, was on a business trip when the plane's left engine exploded sending shrapnel flying into a window next to her seat (pictured bottom). She was rushed to hospital immediately after the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at 11.27am, but authorities confirmed she later died. Annunciation Catholic School, where her two children attend school, identified Riordan as the victim on Tuesday afternoon. 'She was in route from New York when her plane experience (sic) trouble,' assistant principal Amy McCarty wrote in an email to parents. 'At this point, the family needs all the prayers we can offer.' Riordan, the wife of former City of Albuquerque Chief Operations Officer Michael, was the vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank, New Mexico, and had been on a business trip for the bank at the time of the explosion. It is not yet clear if Riordan was the woman nearly sucked out of the plane when the window was smashed.Seven other people were injured in the incident.

I've also posted video confirmation at the bottom of the thread. A hard way to go, to be sure.

Last edited Tue Apr 17, 2018, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

A woman was in the center seat in the aisle across from me, and her child, maybe four or five, was in the window seat, banging on the window with a hammer. Of course, both the flight attendants and I assumed it was a toy plastic hammer until the sound started to make me curious. I took a closer look and it was a METAL hammer. I freaked and called a flight attendant, who also freaked, and grabbed the hammer out of the kid's hand. The mother scowled. We scowled right back. The flight attendant later told me she was trembling in rage at the mother's stupidity and lack of caring over what might have happened to the rest of the passengers if the kid had broken through a window. Those windows are made of tough material, but whack away at it for half an hour with an iron hammer, and who knows what might happen?

I am at a loss of words.

We didn't make a fuss at first, because, after all, who the hell is THAT crazy? So no one even considered the possibility.

No way a hammer would make it into a plane nowadays

It was a while ago, at any rate. Although when I hear of stuff the TSA misses, I can't be positive. Still, I'm pretty sure it was prior to that.

But if the kid's mom was willing to let this go on, either she was a complete moron, or she didn't care about her child a whole hell of a lot.

for letting the child do it. Nevermind that she was watching it happen the whole time.
My mom was working at Red Cross shelter from Hurricane Harvey and a child had a toy gun and kept pointing at her. She kept telling the kid not to do it, as she hated guns of any kind, and the kid kept doing it. Kid's mom got offended by the whole thing and complained to the management about it. They told her exactly where to stick the complaint.

Some people will not control their spawn.

Windows are at least double pained. I've seen versions that have a plastic interior and a glass exterior.

None the less, the mother should have be hauled off...

But I have a LOT of experience dealing with Failure Modes of equipment.

Initial reports are that it happened during / shortly after takeoff, when the engine is at the most power setting of the trip. Fully fueled, full passenger and luggage complement requires a lot of power to get airborne. A micro-crack in the turbine blade from ingesting a bird or large bug or small piece of debris or just age. When the turbine (literally, in this case) grenades, there's a containment ring that's supposed to contain the shrapnel. But if there's enough shrapnel with enough energy, something can get past it. If it's going toward the fuselage, in this case the window, shit's going to get Really Interesting really fast.

The pilot and crew have to Keep Their Shit Together to get the aircraft on the ground on one piece, which is something it sounds like they did quite well.

This is a tragedy for the family of the woman that was In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time. Of course it was, and anyone that says any different deserves the strongest condemnation.

But it could have been so much worse. See the above mentioned Hawaii Airlines flight.

The Engineering for the possibility of such a failure as this can account for almost all contingencies, but sooner or later, that "one in a million" event is going to happen.

Then we have an incident like this.

Maybe it could have been prevented: Maybe Deregulation leads to outsourcing of maintenance, and someone misses something. Maybe something is dropped on the runway. Maybe a bird takes a left instead of a right. We don't know yet. The NTSB will do its' damnedest to find out.

There's no profit in "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" the incident. Meanwhile, we can bury the dear departed and do our best to console the survivors. We have to let the Experts do their jobs to figure out what happened, Then we make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Out of respect for those whom we have lost.

Sometimes lessons come at a high cost. We have to make sure that payment is not wasted.

They had some of the best maintenance in the business. All of it was done by well paid and well trained guys in house. Now that its under new ownership, I seriously hope to hell the maintenance wasn't "pencil whipped" and farmed out to non union people.

Southwest was always a pleasure to do work for. Every time I went into their flight ops, it was nearly impossible to find someone with a bad mood.

...this is the first passenger fatality on a major (i.e. non-commuter) U.S. airline in over nine years. And it was a death toll of one. I remember, fifty-odd years ago, it was uncommon for a couple of months to go by without an entire aircraft going down with no survivors.

Air travel on U.S. carriers, in the mid-2010s, has become almost unbelievably safe. Those who are reacting to this tragedy by vowing they'll avoid flying in the future, or expressing fear about having to take a flight, really need to look at the facts of the matter rather than just get traumatized by a news story. If circumstances required me to do so, I'd have no qualms whatsoever in flying Southwest — and even sitting in a window seat just behind the engine — every day for the next year.

partially sucked out the window of a plane. He is the only one responsible. Ask him. He claimed that he was responsible no American deaths on American airlines in America in 2017.

He only takes credit for the good stuff.