Flightradar24 is reporting that Singapore Airlines flight 836 from Singapore to Shanghai suffered a double engine failure yesterday at cruising altitude. The flight was operated by an Airbus A330-300, and apparently the plane dropped 13,000 feet before power returned:
Singapore Airlines #SQ836 lost power on both engines & lost 13,000 feet before power returnedhttp://t.co/l0m3uoLds6 pic.twitter.com/IOjO2FujsN
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) May 26, 2015
The double engine failure happened while they were flying through the outflow of a huge storm:
#SQ836 lost both engines during the cruise while flying thru outflow of huge storm, shown in pic. H/T:@flightradar24 pic.twitter.com/eL3ZbUCCGG
— Simon (@simon_sat) May 26, 2015
Double engine failures are extremely rare, and immediately reminded me of British Airways flight 9, which was a 747 in that 1980s that lost all four engines due to an ash cloud:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_U30UtpaA
Perhaps the most interesting part of the SQ836 situation is that the pilots decided to continue to Shanghai after restarting the engines, despite being really close to Hong Kong. Unless you’re 100% certain that the incident was isolated and couldn’t happen again (which is tough to do without a proper inspection/investigation), that’s not something you’d usually do.
While it doesn’t make sense to speculate, it will be really interesting to see what comes of this investigation. Hopefully the details are made public.
Fortunately this one ended well — thank goodness!
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