Thread: Qantas plane flies with an extra engine on the wing

An extra engine for transport has been used for a long time, I think the first ones would have been when the 707 acquired turbofans that could not be loaded into its fuselage. Perhaps early sixties.

John

We sat in the departures lounge in Honolulu with our flight delayed, and watched a 747 land, with a 5th engine, taxi to next to our flight, and watched as they swapped out the engine on our delayed flight .... took around 4Hrs from memory.

That would have been close to 25yrs ago .... Pretty standard procedure.

I certainly hope so, Olly!


"Additional drag is caused by air travelling around the spare engine during flight and, to counterbalance this, our pilots are trained to use the flight controls to ensure the aircraft flies straight, level and safely," the airline said.

ah...so thats why they are so safe

Apparently the RB211 engines are carried externally because they can't be split, but earlier P&W CF-6 could be split and carried inside the fuselage.
Used to see the 5th engine a fair bit when I was working at S(KS)A in the late 80s/90s.

Not sure what the split refers to - was just a post by a Qantas engineer friend on facebook a few days ago (of course its almost impossible to find the post now)



Martyn

I think from memory that the Classic 747's were the first for 5th pod as it was termed. It was also a cost option modification & not all B747's were so equiped & this extended right through to the B747-400. Back in the early large turbofan days the likes of the JT9D would not fit in the cargo holds so hence the 5th pod to ferry replacement engines.

RB211's were modular but it still took days to assemble one from it's component modules, & the advent of B747 freighters negated the use of 5th pod engines, because the whole engine could fit in the cargo hold complete & ready for installation, no need to remove fan blades fit a core cover etc. So not a new procedure & to my knowledge only available on the B747. Sadly most of the B747-400's I did entry into service with back in 1989 are now in graveyards or scrapped! We had 52 in service with Singapore Airlines alone back in 2003, I think they are down to zero in pax config today!