Safety Topics

THE necessity of carefully thinking out and following of emergency procedures even at times of great pressure and the need to relay information to the passengers is illustrated by an incident which occurred to a TriStar aircraft en route from Miami, Florida to Nassau, Grand Bahama Island. During this flight in 1983, the flight crew noted an indication of loss of pressure on the No 2 engine and shut it down. Rather than continue the descent to Nassau which was about 50 nautical miles away, the Captain decided to return to Miami because of better weather and technical approach aids there. However, after the aircraft's course was reversed and it levelled off at 16,000ft, the No 3 engine flamed out. The No 1 engine had also failed and the flight crew began a descent designed to maximise the glide distance and began efforts to restart the No 2 engine. At the same time, the flight crew considered it probable that they would be forced to ditch the aircraft and the flight engineer told the senior flight attendant to prepare the cabin for imminent ditching. After descending about 11,000 ft, the flight crew succeeded in restarting the No 2 engine and subsequently landed the aircraft safely in Miami. There were no injuries to the 162 passengers and 10 crew members.