Results tagged “engine”

Cats do the darndest things—like hang out in SUV engines and wait for cops to rescue 'em. Seriously, an orange and white cat had be to extracted by Emergency Service Unit detectives when a SUV driver discovered the feline in the vehicle's front hood.

In April, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill giving New York the toughest laws against vehicular idling; leaving your engine running for more than three minutes is punishable by fines ranging from $220 to $2,000 for repeat offenders. And the limit in a school zone is just one minute. At the bill signing, Bloomberg declared, "Those of us that want to leave a good life for our children, and want to have clean air for us to breathe, and clean water to drink... it's incumbent on us to really carry the fight."

As it faces criticism over engine maintenance, American Airlines says the engine of a Chicago-bound plane that failed because of an object that was sucked in. However, in this post-Flight 1549 world, American doesn't think it was a bird; "early speculation" is that the object may be from an earlier flight (the engine was sent to Tulsa for inspection). The flight had taken off from Laguardia on Tuesday morning and, about 20 minutes in, something caused dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces of sharp metal to fall over a warehouse in College Point, Queens. The flight made an emergency landing at JFK and no one was hurt from the plane or on the ground. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the plane had a recent history of engine issues and was overdue for inspection; American disputed that and said, "There was nothing in our previous maintenance checks to indicate any issue that could be related or connected to the failure of this engine."

Yikes: WABC 7 reports, "A plane that experienced an engine failure above Queens may have dropped plane parts on a College Point neighborhood." An American Airlines flight (#309) left Laguardia this morning, bound for Chicago's O'Hare airport, and experienced some trouble and engine number two failed. The FAA said metal parts fell from the engine onto a home on 123rd Street. The plane, an MD-80, was diverted to JFK; according to WCBS 2, no injuries were reported from the plane or on the ground.

The National Transportation Safety Board has begun to inspect the left engine from US Airways Flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River on January 15, after its engines failed. Investigator Robert Benzon said, "We'll see how it was affected by bird strike." The engine had been lodged in the Hudson and was found by sonar—the NY Times says readings found "cone-shaped object at the end of what looked like a long skid mark, roughly in line with 52nd Street."

According to CNN, passengers, apparently on the same plane as last Thursday's Flight 1549, "heard a series of loud bangs and the flight crew told them they could have to make an emergency landing." Last Thursday, US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River after its engines failed, apparently after a bird strike.

Passenger Steve Jeffrey of Charlotte, North Carolina, told CNN he was flying in first class Tuesday when, about 20 minutes into the flight, "it sounded like the wing was just snapping off."

Continue reading "Flight 1549 Plane Previously Had Problems"

Investigators say that Flight 1549 lost both its engines' power at the same time on Thursday afternoon. The US Airways Airbus A320 ended up in the Hudson River after an apparent bird strike.

Birds—they think they own the skies. Ever since the Wright Brothers they've been vying for supremacy up there, landing their first fatal blow in 1912 by downing a plane into the surf off Long Beach, California. Yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson River was just the latest chapter in an ongoing pitched battle between bird and plane. Of course, from the point of view of the Canada geese believed to have been consumed by both engines of U.S. Airways Airbus A320, yesterday's strike must have seemed a bit of a Pyrrhic victory (though there's probably a sweet flock of virgin geese greeting them in the afterlife, hey-oh).