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I’m utterly sorry for the flight crew… 
And whoever might have been involved on the ground. Truly terrible.
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I can imagine that MD-11 was a handful with the fuel they had for the trip and it losing an engine when they did. Poor crew. No fighting chance.
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Something other than a simple engine failure was at play here. Even at max TOW, airliners handle great and climb surprisingly well (ok…surprisingly adequately) when an engine fails.
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It sure seems like it. But, doesn’t the MD-11 have a narrow envelope for pitch when heavy? Thinking about the FedEx crash in Japan. Wait, what am I saying? You’ve probably flown the aircraft professionally, and I’ve watched a Mentour Pilot episode.
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You may be right. I flew the -10, which was sweet as a cupcake. Whenever you stretch planes you generally make them harder.
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That would explain the eerie similarity to the Concord at CDG.
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I wonder how an engine detaching itself, will manifest on the caution and warning panel…?
An engine failure, like a flameout or a turbine failing will manifest itself with some indications that are relatively easy to understand and act upon. You will see fan speed rolling back, turbine temp rising or falling, depending on the condition, fuel flow, etc.
The whole engine gondola detaching, though…? I bet that caused a startle.
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Short of all indications disappearing no. You’d hope the spar valve would close on it’s own though. Bu the tank rupturing could happen if it’d bounce on the ground and back up I suppose? Quite a few rumours doing the rounds already and not much real info.
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That’s what I’m thinking as well. Suddenly all the engine indications go Zero!
I guess there are valves that should cut fuel and Hyd? So maybe a warning light going off on an emergency valve closing?
Either way, not something you see often…
Didn’t the El-Al Cargo 747 lose an engine completely, in Amsterdam in the 90’s…?
Sounds plausible…
Was this the first flight after scheduled maintenance?
Piedmont dropped a motor back in the late 80s/early 90s (737-400). They saw enough to know that they “lost” the engine. But it took tower to inform them that they actually LOST the engine. (My dad got me a fan blade of the fallen motor.) The pods are designed to pop off in an impact without fuel spewing everywhere. Therefore actually dropping the pod shouldn’t be a disaster. Obviously in this case it was.
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Looking at the angle the plane came in… 
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Two actually, one detached and went sideways and smashed the other off. They could have landed if they didn’t drop the flaps but that is quite a bit of hindsight unfortunately.
There’s not an emergency valve as such, Not quite sure how a spar valve would react, I suspect it would get commanded to close quite quickly but honestly i have no idea, it falls quite far outside the normal line of thinking.
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Which is the one where they used a forklift to change an engine and the mounts broke I have it in my head that was a DC10
was it this?
Second.
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Was it the MD-11 or DC-10 that was notorious for being difficult to fly? Or am I imagining things? I could have sworn I heard something like that somewhere and I’ve always wondered why fleets haven’t switched over to a different airframe. (Narrator: “Because money is more important than lives.”)
The DC-10 was a ■■■■■cat. I flew both the -10 and -30. Like all stretched designs the MD-11 had less perfect flying qualities but according to friends it was similar enough to the -30 that you’d be hard pressed to recognize much difference. I find the 767-400 rather difficult to land consistently well. (Everyone does). But the 767-300 is quite easy. It’s just the act of stretching that differentiates the handling in pitch. But still. We’re talking airliners, not MiG-3s. “Difficult” is a very loose term.
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