Even if some or all of an airplane's engines fail, it can still safely glide while descending in preparation of an emergency landing. An airplane won't just drop to the ground after its engines fail. Airplanes are designed with long wings to create lift, which essentially holds them in the air.
All fixed-wing aircraft have some capability to glide with no engine power; that is, they do not fall straight down like a stone, but rather continue to glide moving horizontally while descending.
Without engine thrust, a 747-200 has a glide ratio of roughly 15:1, meaning it can glide forward 15 kilometres for every kilometre it drops. The flight crew quickly determined that the aircraft was capable of gliding for 23 minutes and covering 91 nautical miles (169 km) from its flight level of 37,000 feet (11,000 m).
Flight 236 glided for nearly 75 miles. After gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 kilometres, the plane touched down hard in Lajes, around 1,030 feet (310 m) past the runway threshold of runway 33, at a speed of around 200 knots at 06:45 UTC.
On average, the typical cruising speed of a large commercial aircraft, like a Boeing 747, is somewhere between 475 and 500 knots (roughly 575 mph). So what is the cruising speed of a 747? Depending on passenger load, the average cruise speed of a 747 is 490 nautical miles or Mach 0.85.
According to flight attendant Brenda Orelus, the dirties place on an airplane is not the lavatory or the tray tables. It is the seat-back pockets. IN a video that Orelus posted on TikTok she revealed to her more than 100,000 followers that the pockets are full of germs and are almost never cleaned.
Techincally, there is only one way for the aircraft to remain hanging motionless in the air: if weight and lift cancel each other out perfectly, and at the same time thrust and drag cancel each other out too. But this is incredibly rare. To stay in the air and sustain its flight, an aircraft needs to be moving forward.
It's entirely possible. While a barrel roll is technically an aerobatic maneuver, it is also a 1-G maneuver (less than 1.5 Gs are encountered during a properly executed barrel roll).
It can dump fuel to reduce its weight. And it is a surprisingly good glider, which ensures that the chances of landing successfully with one engine running are pretty good, as it slows down the rate of descent significantly. However, one engine is not enough to maintain a safe flying altitude for a Boeing 747.
Flying at a typical altitude of 36,000 feet (about seven miles), an aircraft that loses both engines will be able to travel for another 70 miles before reaching the ground.
Tracking the 747 fleet from 1966 to 2023Fleet data from IBA Insight reveals 346 active Boeing 747 family aircraft in service worldwide as of 31 January 2023. Other prolific operators include UPS (41 aircraft) Cargolux (29 aircraft) and Lufthansa (27 aircraft).
Passenger jet pilots do not shut down any of the aircraft's engines without a solid reason. They may be forced to do so in the event of failure or even a relatively minor technical malfunction to avoid further damage and larger problems.