I was recently on a transatlantic flight during which our Boeing 767's right jet engine caught fire and blew out. It was a terrible experience and I can assure you that at least for the first 5-10 minutes nobody on the plane was buried in their books or personal electronics. Everyone was suppressing panic and desperately paying attention to whatever shreds of information we could get from the flight attendants. The whole excuse about wanting people to pay attention during an emergency is total crap. Once your body kicks into survival mode the last thing on your mind is your phone.
Holy crap. That's terrifying - where were you when it blew out? How did the staff (pilots and stewards/stewardesses) behave - I've always wondered how well anyone, no matter how much they were trained, would cope in a real [potential] emergency on an aircraft?
Many years ago, I was on a 747 when an engine blew out (by which I mean a column of flame came out of the engine--no exterior physical damage). As I recall, they didn't say anything about a problem at first but the plane diverted to the nearest airport which happened to be Kuwait; this was long before the Gulf War etc. 747's have four engines though so this was possibly a less serious problem than on a two engine plane.
Part of the reason we don't have as many 3 and 4 engine airliners anymore is ETOPS[1]. Modern turbine engines are so reliable, powerful, and efficient that there's not as significant of a need for the additional redundancy provided by a third or fourth engine.
Two engine planes don't have problems flying on 1 engine. Adding an engine is the best safety feature the plane can have. Multi-engine pilots often joke that you pay for both engines when you train, but you only use one, since during training, the instructors constantly shut one down. By that point, you've already got at least a single engine land certificate, so the only thing they're training you for is that when an engine cuts out, instead of gliding to the nearest field/strip, you fly there a little crooked under power.
There are lots of problems flying two-engined planes on one engine. Asymmetric thrust makes flying the plane tricky. Significantly reduced thrust greatly reduces performance. Managing the engines becomes more complex since you might not treat them the same anymore (especially if one is on fire).
In small multi-engine planes where single-engine flight is marginal, the safety advantage is terribly clear. You have a better chance if an engine fails, but you also have a lot more failures.
It's less of a problem in large airliners, where the margins are higher and the training more thorough. The safety advantage is clear enough that all large airliners have at least two engines. Still, there are accidents that stem from a single failed engine on a multi-engine airliner:
That last one is not technically an airliner, but it's the same basic category, and I think it's a particularly interesting example as they had four engines, but managed to screw things up badly enough after losing just one to crash anyway.
I can't find the quote, but it was from a pilot of one of the first commercial 2 engined airliner jets, 737 or 777 I forget.
Basically the reporter said, are you more worried if you lose one engine of two versus one engine of four on the 747/707/etc. To which the pilot replied, losing an engine is always a serious problem. Maybe if we ever get to my copilot saying we've lost engine 43 will it be a non issue.
More engines just means more chances for failure. All I know is losing any engine isn't something you treat lightly.
A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."
We were about an hour away from the nearest airport in Ireland. The staff reacted pretty poorly IMO... no information given whatsoever for the first few minutes. Everyone was freaking out. If you're interested full story is here: http://obiefernandez.com/writing/2013/8/10/engine-failure
Maybe - but I still has this photo of me leaving the office building during a fire holding my PC's harddrive. The whole workstation was too heavy sadly.
