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roygbiv2 a day ago

Looks like a compressor stall on number two engine two seconds into the video.

appreciatorBus a day ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t know, that looks like a lot more than just a stall. There was a ton of flame that looked like it was coming out of the front or top of the engine, rather than just something shooting out the back.

loeg a day ago | parent [-]

I think you're looking at the left wing (number 1) engine; GP is talking about either the tail or right wing engine. (I think tail is number 2 on MD-11.) There's a brief explosion visible through the smoke at about 1-2 seconds in, to the right of the engine visibly on fire; that's probably what he's talking about.

Freeze frame: https://imgur.com/a/c3h8Qd3

FabHK a day ago | parent | next [-]

And having 2 out of 3 engines fail (or underperform) would explain the insufficient climb thrust.

loeg a day ago | parent [-]

Right!

appreciatorBus a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yup makes sense. Now seeing photos of the entire left engine on the ground by the runway and the implication that however it failed it might have damaged the tail engine.

positron26 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Agree, looks like an engine disruption.

The rotation already exacerbates the flow into that engine. Change in flow geometry gets more smoke in its way when it's already eating turbulent air.

We don't know if it just had a disruption or a full-blown stall, but give the way it made it to takeoff speed and then just gave out, stall seems likely.

CPLX a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I would say it does not, in fact, look like a compressor stall. It looks very much like an uncontained disassembly, presumably from fan blades that suffered a catastrophic failure and broke up in a way that exceeded the limits of the engine's containment.

Obviously impossible to tell from some cell phone type videos. Being struck by something is also possible. But it sure does look like an uncontained engine failure.

loeg a day ago | parent [-]

I think you're looking at engine number 1, while GP is talking about engine 2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818448