Anybody ever have a engine failure at night?

[Rally]

Just curious what stories anyone has, I know pretty rare just curious how it went.

 

[UnAnswerd]

I've had it happen, and it was quite frightening. Carburetor ice was the problem. With no carb heat, I was forced to use some of those chemical hand warmers to slowly thaw the carburetors on my snowmobile.

 

[Crimson03]

H-300 5' hover at night-set it down without bending anything. No warning engine sucked a valve.

 

[FL000]

avbug should chime in any time now.

 

[moonlight]

Sixty miles north of Ely NV, Thanksgiving weekend two years ago. I was flying a 172 from Vegas to Twin Falls ID for the holidays. I descended to stay under some clouds and the engine started to run really rough. I thought it was carb ice at first, tried everything I could think of (read: pulled on the carb heat ). Engine still ran like crap, so I put the carb heat back in and gained a few RPMs back. Started to follow highway 93 back to Ely, figuring I'll go as far as I can, and if I need to, I know the highway is beneath me. It took full power, and Vx to keep the thing holding altitude, and I limped ALL the way back to Ely. The conversation in the cockpit (I was alone) varied from me swearing at the airplane to pleading with the Man Upstairs to keep the thing running. As I was approaching Ely airport, a Seneca was in the pattern. I called on CTAF and requested priority to the runway, and the other pilot was cool about it. Out of nowhere, the dispatcher for Scenic Airlines came on the horn and asked if I needed any "assistance". For the first time in the whole situation I started to laugh. Those of you who are familiar with Ely will understand why (read: teensy weensy little town in the middle of nowhere). I thought to myself, "Dude, by the time you get ahold of the volunteer fire department, I'm either going to be in a hotel somewhere, or trudging out of some field. Anyway, I made it back to the airport, landed with the throttle firewalled and 10 degrees of flaps in, and as soon as I pulled the throttle back to taxi off the runway, the engine died. I pushed the plane to the parking area, tied the airplane down, and called the only hotel in town to send someone to meet me. The only injury I got was a sore foot from kicking the airplane before I walked into the FBO. I'm just thankful my wife and son weren't on board.

 

[mattpilot]

dangerboy.... not knowing all the facts of your flight... but it sounds like you should of enriched the mixture as you descended.

anyhow... what was the cause of the engine trouble?

 

[moonlight]

I guess I forgot that little detail...sorry. The #3 cylinder sucked the intake valve.

 

[starchkr]

blew a seal once and lost all oil in the engine...no worries though, just kept going on the other. Man i love turbines, and multiples on the same plane at that. They make great non-events.

 

[Duderino]

Starchecker, I am glad to see that you made Captain in the Lear. I remeber when you were in the Baron. Congratulations.

 

[Lrjtcaptain]

Flying a Cessna 310 between Watertown S.D. and Daytona Beach, Florida. Left Omaha, picked up my pax, and refuled in CGI. About 11pm over JAX airspace around 12k the left engine quit. No biggie, engine driven fuel pump failure. Turned on the electric fuel pump and it fired right back up. Asked the pax if they would prefer to land at JAX or continue to DAB. WE all agreed to head to DAB and we made it no problem, engine ran fine on the aux.

 

[Corona]

Sixty miles north of Ely NV, Thanksgiving weekend two years ago. I was flying a 172 from Vegas to Twin Falls ID for the holidays. I descended to stay under some clouds and the engine started to run really rough. I thought it was carb ice at first, tried everything I could think of (read: pulled on the carb heat ). Engine still ran like crap, so I put the carb heat back in and gained a few RPMs back. Started to follow highway 93 back to Ely, figuring I'll go as far as I can, and if I need to, I know the highway is beneath me. It took full power, and Vx to keep the thing holding altitude, and I limped ALL the way back to Ely. The conversation in the cockpit (I was alone) varied from me swearing at the airplane to pleading with the Man Upstairs to keep the thing running. As I was approaching Ely airport, a Seneca was in the pattern. I called on CTAF and requested priority to the runway, and the other pilot was cool about it. Out of nowhere, the dispatcher for Scenic Airlines came on the horn and asked if I needed any "assistance". For the first time in the whole situation I started to laugh. Those of you who are familiar with Ely will understand why (read: teensy weensy little town in the middle of nowhere). I thought to myself, "Dude, by the time you get ahold of the volunteer fire department, I'm either going to be in a hotel somewhere, or trudging out of some field. Anyway, I made it back to the airport, landed with the throttle firewalled and 10 degrees of flaps in, and as soon as I pulled the throttle back to taxi off the runway, the engine died. I pushed the plane to the parking area, tied the airplane down, and called the only hotel in town to send someone to meet me. The only injury I got was a sore foot from kicking the airplane before I walked into the FBO. I'm just thankful my wife and son weren't on board.

Must be an "Ely Triangle". It wasn't an engine failure, but I was crewing a mighty Jetstream that blew the hydraulic pressure line on the left engine after landing in Ely. We didn't realize it until the pax had walked into the terminal for a break. That wonderful red fluid coated the plane from the nacelle down the wing to the cargo pod, running off in little streams. Scary sh!t, in retrospect.

C

 

[G36pilot]

Cherokee Six-260 South of Macomb, MS KMCB at 3,500' on a body haul. Our passenger was in a clear plastic body bag and strapped in a litter secured in the back.

The engine abruptly began running rough then just quit. Our fuel state was 1/2 tanks in both mains and zip in the outboards. A friend was flying from the right seat while I attempted a restart. He radioed MCB FSS of our status and they recruited a departing Cessna to get a visual on us which he did.

We'd been paralleling the interstate that runs N/S along our route when the failure occurred so we lined up on the Northbound lane as the Southbound was pretty congested. About 1,500' my partner and I switched duties with him continuing restart attempts. At a few hundred feet AGL I noticed the landing light was now inoperative so seeing power lines and overpasses was going to be a real trick. Alignment with the highway was no problem as I lined up behind a small pickup truck's tail lights. Unfortunately, I'd overshot my touchdown point and realized I was probably going to tag the truck shortly after touchdown. Now comes the extraordinary part.

Mid landing flare, slow, with full flaps just as I was going to "plant" it on the highway and apply max brakes my partner (God bless him) got the engine started. Yes, this did blow my approach even worse and committed us to some serious truck avoidance, but he'd had his head down the whole time working on the restart and had no idea where we were. Remember, I had already blown the approach and was now offered enough energy for a slight turn or stagger over the truck and dump the aircraft on the road in from of it. I chose the latter, but the engine kept running.

We literally staggered over the truck so low we would have removed any long antennae had one been installed on the truck. At this point I probably should have pulled the power and landed, but we'd already reached overpass/power line height so I continued climbing. As we cleared the vehicle my partner finally looked up, saw that our nav lights were illuminating the hills adjacent the interstate, and said "Hey Ace, we're below the tree line". I don't remember my response, but he said it wasn't more than one syllable.

Since the engine was running I didn't touch a thing and continued the climb all the way to KMCB and only then reduced power. From 5,000' we did a circling approach to landing allowing for another engine failure. The landing was successful, we parked, went inside to calm our nerves and talk to an A&P who was working late. Alone he walked out to the aircraft to troubleshoot...

Ashen faced he quickly returned from the darkened ramp stuttering "Cccan uuuu mmmove yyyour pppasssenggger? I hhavve ttoo cccheck the fffuel vvalve." We'd forgotten to warn him about the body which was strapped right over the fuel valve inspection cover.

A defective poppet valve to one of the empty outboard tanks had opened allowing air into the fuel system. We later found out an AD on the fuel selector valve had not been complied with.

Can you imagine being the pickup truck driver hearing and feeling a roaring aircraft crawling over his truck, appearing in his headlights only to disappear? Unless he filed a police report, do you think anyone believed him?

Both Louisiana and Mississippi State Police were notified by FSS of our status as we weren't sure which side of the border we were on.

 

[TurboS7]

Many engine failures at night but all with multi-engine aircraft so it was just feather shot the approach and go from there. I will tell a story of one of our pilots( I owned and operated a 135 our to Chicago) He has run a load of freight from MDW to SDF to the Ford plant there. He was in a C-206 N61122. He called me from SDF and I cleared him to return to DPA empty. I got a phone call from him at 0400 in the morning and this was his story.
He was flying VFR at 4500 feet and everything was going along just fine and dandy. It was one of those clear night where you could see 100 miles. Suddenly he looked and saw that his oil pressure was at zero. He turn immediatly to an airport that he saw on the horizon. We had Loran on our airplanes and they had the nearest airport funtion, he plugged that in and heading directly to the airport. About that time the engine seized due to lack of oil.He set up a glide at 80mph and headed for the airport. When he got close he realized that he was too low to manuever to line up with the runway. He decided to just aim for the center of the airport and live with whatever happened. He just missed trees as he came across the airport touched down on the runway jumped the ditch and went into a corn field. The airplane had large tires from being outfitted for Alaska, in the corn( it was August)slowed him down and stopped him in about 150 feet. I flew down and inspected the airplane the next morning, there was not a scratch on the aircraft, I congradulated the pilot.
We put an engine from our engine shop in a van and drove the engine down to the aircraft. We had the airplane flying again within a week. The pilot made an excellent decesioin and flew the airplane with the altitude and airspeed that he had left. As a operator I was very happy. BTW the oil filter holder blew off, the thread in the crankcase gave out. This did result in an AD being put out for the engine.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

Just curious what stories anyone has, I know pretty rare just curious how it went.

Two at night, both on multi's., Not as rare as you would think on hard working airplanes. I am still here and no bent metal so I guess it went fine.

Crankshaft failure on one, Catastrophic engine case failure on the other. Apparantly there was a crack in the case that our maint. missed in the 100 hour the day before.

One partial failure at night, sucked a valve. Had about 2500 RPM usable, anything over that and it surged badly.

Isn't 135 freight great?

 

[starchkr]

Thanks Duderino....


It only took 4 1/2 years to get it but i finally did it...(3 months ago). I guess i took longer than most however, i was VERY picky as to where i went with the company.

To the thread...I do remember another instance from my prop days of old. Flying between CPS and MDW had the 310 on the aux tanks and was not monitoring the fuel as closely as i should have been. I was fat dumb and happy going along and all of the sudden the right engine sputters and stops, then the left does the same thing. Now i am scared $hitless, until i realize i had the tanks selected to aux...a quick switch to the mains (tips) and application of the aux boost pumps and they fired right back up. Without a word i climbed back up to my assigned altitude and continued on my merry little way ( i was only about 800' low, and i think atc was asleep or something because he said nothing as well). I will tell you that after that happened, there was never a time i didn't pay attention to fuel ever again, even to today. That's all for me, hopefully that will be it forever.

 

[91100 100 set]

not at night but...

I was a green co-pilot on a chartered Navajo a few years back. Pretty new to the plane. Sitting there, enjoying the hazy view between the Philly area and Nantucket, VFR direct over the water using the RNAV. I'm just minding my own business and I notice lots of oil dribbling out of every vent, seam, and orifice on the cowling of the right engine. I say, in my best "trying to not sound too much like a rookie" voice, "uhh, is it normal for that much oil to seep from the engine inflight?" Captain looks over and his eyes get real big and says " $%#@ NO!" Nothing unusual on the instruments, no vibration, no noise. "Did you put that oil cap back on right?" he asked me. "I certainly hope so", I say, thinking that if I didn't, I'd be out looking for a job in a few days. Anyway, in the absence of anything out of the ordinary other than some oil visible on the cowl, the captain decides to press on, but turn slightly left towards Long Island in case something did let go. We just get over dry land and the Manifold pressure starts falling off on the right side. Captain decides to pull 'em both back and we pretty much coast into East Hampton. We shut if off after landing, and it immediately starts smoking (all the oil burning off the hot engine), so the FBO people come running with fire extinguishers. We ended up being stuck there for a few hours until the boss comes in a light single to rescue us.

Turns out the engine cracked a cylinder (which surprised me that we didn't feel any vibration) which caused enough vibration to crack the exhaust manifold which dumped the pressure to the turbocharger, which caused the drop in MP. I would imagine that the engine would have continued to run normally aspirated (262 hp down from 350), at least until all the oil seeped out. But it wasn't the oil cap.

 

[PA31Ho]

Check it out:

http://forums.flightinfo.com/showthread.php?t=7553&highlight=katana+pensacola