Commentary: Qantas flight mayday – can a plane fly on just one engine?

CAIRNS, Australia: You may have seen the news Qantas flight 144 from Auckland, New Zealand, landed safely in Sydney on Wednesday (Jan 18) after the pilot was forced to shut down an engine and issue a mayday call while flying over the Pacific Ocean.

The plane was reportedly a 10-year-old, twin-jet Boeing 737 and was carrying 145 passengers, all of whom disembarked normally after landing yesterday afternoon.

These events do, unfortunately, happen occasionally in aviation – I myself have lost an engine while flying – but the good news is it’s extremely rare. That makes aviation the safest form of transport in the world.

These are highly trained pilots who spend a lot of time in full-motion simulators going over events exactly like this. When you’re down an engine and you have lot of water under you, you have a process to follow.

It becomes rote; you don’t panic, you don’t go off the rails, you remember your training, and that’s what happened here.

Can planes fly on just one engine? Absolutely. That is what they are designed to do.

By law, planes have to be able to fly from point A to point B, over water, on just one engine. The guidance set by safety regulators in Australia mandates that any plane that takes off with the intention of getting to a certain destination has to be able to get there on one engine – based on the departure loads determined before take-off.