r/nextfuckinglevel • u/-rbbt • 26d ago

Engine fails during student pilot’s flight

1.9k Upvotes

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281

u/tikojonas 26d ago

Insane that this actually happened. During my lessons they would power down the engines on purpose to show it will not fall to the ground but it will float wherever you’re able to go. He executed it perfect when he needed to.

29

u/brunaBla 26d ago

How does this happen? Is this true for smaller planes only?

17

u/crazy_cookie123 26d ago

Planes stay in the air because of the wings, and the wings don't suddenly disappear when you lose your engines. Planes can glide for quite a while when they lose power provided they have enough altitude.

1

u/brunaBla 26d ago

Thank you for your answer.

I guess I was picturing 747 head on plane crashes and wondered why they couldn’t glide too? But I’m sure a lot of other factors were at play too

10

u/Techwood111 25d ago

They CAN glide, too.

3

u/alabomb 25d ago

To add on to the other answers, here's a famous example of a passenger aircraft in a similar situation to the video in the OP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

2

u/proton_badger 25d ago

The Mayday series have a great episode on that. I think it’s on Tubi.tv.

2

u/Thecna2 25d ago

The longest glide for a big jet is an A330 which had to glide for 120 km/75 mi over the Atlantic to land on one smallish island. They still had 10-20 mins left before they hit the ocean. So they can glide a long way if things are right.