Can an Aircraft Fly on a Single Engine?

Until recent years, transoceanic flights were almost always flown by quad-engine aircrafts. It was because the more the engines, the greater is the redundancy for safety. Should an engine fail, you have 3 others to fly the aircraft safely. But as twin-engine aircraft is the norm these days, let's look at how the aircraft can fly with an engine inoperative.

With the advancement in technology, the twin-engine aircrafts consists of turbofan engines, which lead to fewer engine failures. Also, two engines burn less fuel compared to four engines. Due to this fact, airlines tend to rapidly adapt to such fuel-efficient airliners rather than fuel thirsty aircrafts such as the Airbus A340, A380, and the famous Queen of the Skies, the Boeing B747.

Aircrafts are Designed to Fly on One Engine

Engine failures are rare, but they do happen. For the passengers, it is not a thing to panic. Modern airliners are designed to fly on a single engine. Before the airframe is certified, it needs to get an ETOPS certification. The aircrafts which fly over long oceanic routes would be ETOPS certified.

ETOPS stand for Extended Range Twin Engine Operational Performance Standards.

It is a certification that allows aircrafts to fly routes which are more than an hour away from the closest airport where the plane can land safely.

It essentially is how far the plane can fly on a single engine. For instance, the popular Boeing B777 aircraft has an ETOPS-330 rating, meaning the aircraft can fly for 330 minutes on a single engine, on routes which are 3.5 hours away from a suitable airport for landing. The same rating is for the B787 Dreamliner.

The Airbus A330neo has ETOPS-180 with an option for increment up to ETOPS-285, meaning the aircraft can fly for more than 3500 km on one engine!

The modern Airbus A350 has a whopping ETOPS certification of 370 minutes, meaning, in theory, the aircraft can fly for about 6 hours with one engine inoperative.

Narrow-bodies and ETOPS

Within some years, we will be seeing many airlines preferring the Airbus A321XLR and the Boeing B737-800 and the Max flying the oceanic routes as they have 180 minutes ETOPS certification. These planes are easy to fill, and can fly upto 12 hours non-stop.

In the event of an engine failure, the pilots will take the aircraft to a lower altitude, and will try to gain the maximum continuous thrust on the operating engine, and will look for an alternate destination to land.

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