Earlier this week, a United Airlines flight suffered an engine failure whilst enroute to San Francisco.
Such an incident caused certain precautions by the crew onboard to ensure safe passage to their destination.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
UA214 – Honolulu-San Francisco…
United Airlines flight UA214 is a routine scheduled flight between Honolulu and San Francisco.
In the incident itself, UA214 was operated by an aircraft registered as N57869.
As per data from Planespotters.net, N57869 is a 21.2 year old Boeing 757-300 aircraft.
The airframe originally started out life with American Trans Air in September 2002, before being handed over to Continental Airlines in August 2005.
Following the combination with United Airlines, the aircraft was handed over in October 2010.
UA214 departed Honolulu at 0954 local time on March 4.
As per reporting from The Aviation Herald, UA214 was around 270 nautical miles from San Francisco when this incident happened.
Crew reported to ATC that the right hand engine had failed, prompting an initial descent to 25,000 feet from FL330.
Around 50 minutes after it’s initial descent, UA214 landed safely into SFO following this incident.
Can An Aircraft Fly on One Engine?
In the event of an engine failure like this, an aircraft can fly on one engine to get to it’s destination or to divert.
With this incident happening closer to San Francisco, the crew onboard United flight UA214 opted to continue onwards.
If it was in a different position across the Pacific Ocean, it would have diverted to the closest airfield.
So, in brief, an aircraft like this can fly home safely on one engine if incidents like this arise.
Overall…
In-all, this incident onboard United Airlines flight UA214 from Honolulu to San Francisco was well-managed.
The crew were able to assess the problem quickly, and make their decisions quickly in terms of where to land.
At the time of writing (6/3/24 @ 1615 UK time), N57869 remains on the ground following this issue.
It is unclear when the aircraft will be back in the skies again following this engine failure.
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