How Far Can a Plane Glide Without Engines?

It's rare that all of a plane's engines fail, but when they do, a pilot can still glide the aircraft to a safe landing. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/how-far-can-plane-go-no-engines.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's January two thousand nine.
The US Airways Flight fifty nine is being boarded at
New York City's LaGuardia Airport. If all goes as planned,
the plane will touch down in Charlotte, North Carolina, later

(00:22):
that evening. All does not go as planned. It turned
out okay, but it was harrowing at PM Eastern Standard time.
The aircraft, now laden with a hundred and fifty passengers
and five crew members, takes off. Within minutes, disaster strikes.
The plane is unexpectedly bombarded by a flock of Canada geese,

(00:44):
causing both engines to shut down. Feet that's eight fifty
above one of the world's biggest cities. San's engines, the
airliner loses almost all of its thrust. This is a
serious problem because thrust is the physical force that moves
flying planes in the direction of motion. Unable to restart

(01:05):
the engines, Captain Chelsea Sellenberger nickname Sully, and First Officer
Jeffrey Skiles have to act fast. Time is running short
and they're losing altitude. If you were around and tuned
into the news that winter in two thousand nine. You
probably remember the amazing feet the pilots pulled off. After

(01:25):
considering detours to LaGuardia and an airport in New Jersey,
Sellenberger and Skiles made an emergency landing on the frigid
Hudson River. Although some passengers did have serious injuries, everyone
aboard that plane lived to tell the tale. New York
Governor David Patterson called it a miracle on the Hudson.

(01:45):
The landing was both dramatic and unusual, but this wasn't
the first time passing birds made trouble for a large aircraft.
When unfortunate goals or geese gets sucked into a plane's
engine or engines, they can do serious damage to machinery.
These so called bird strikes are the most common cause
of dual engine failure on two engine airplanes like the

(02:07):
one that Selinberger was flying. Since the nineteen forties, some
airports have used falconers to help scare unwanted birds off
of their premises. The mere sight of a trained hawker
falcon can repel other avian species from the area, but
other accidents can happen too. Maybe there's ice forming in
the carburetor, or perhaps the vehicle just doesn't have enough fuel. Three,

(02:31):
A perfect storm of technical issues and unit conversion mistakes
left an air Canada bowing seven sixty seven without fuel
some forty feet that's twelve thousand, five hundred meters over
central Canada. Before long, it lost power to both engines.
After descending at a rate of feet that's seven hundred
and sixty per minute, the pilots were able to glide

(02:53):
their bowing all the way to a safe, albeit bumpy
landing on a race car track. The pilots were hailed
here and the airplane was dubbed the Gimli Glider after
the town where it landed. Essentially, any plane can glide
if the need arises, and in situations where all the
engines have failed, the pilots have to expect the plane

(03:14):
to do some gliding without the thrust those engines are
built to provide. The plane can't help but lose altitude.
But how far can a plane glide when it's not
designed to be a glider. Aircrafts whose engines conk out
at higher elevations can glide for longer periods of time.
This is one of the reasons why Selinberger and Skiles

(03:36):
Hudson River landing was so impressive they had to glide
their way to safety in a matter of minutes from
a pretty low altitude. Everything happened very fast on US
Airways flight. The plane hit the birds within two minutes
of taking off, and just three minutes later the plane
was in the Hudson River. Obviously, planes come in all

(03:58):
shapes and sizes, so you're flying one, it's important to
know your vehicle's best glide speed. In a nutshell, this
is the speed that will let your airplane travel the
farthest distance while sacrificing the least amount of altitude. A
related concept is the minimum sinc speed, or the pace
of travel that will maximize how much time you can
spend gliding. Depending on your situation, you may choose to

(04:22):
prioritize time over distance or vice versa. Writing for USA Today,
in veteran pilot John Cox stated that a jetliner could
probably be expected to glide for around a hundred miles
that's a hundred and sixty KOs if all its engines
failed thirty thousand feet that's about nine thousand meters above
ground level. That's around the distance between Los Angeles and

(04:44):
Palm Springs or New York City in Atlantic City, though
he noted quote having all engines quit in a modern
airplane is extremely rare, which is reassuring. Today's episode is
based on the article how far can a plain glide

(05:05):
if its engines fail? On how stuff works dot Com
written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of I
Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com
and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
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