What If Both Engines Quit Right After Takeoff?

You're climbing out of New York when both engines go quiet. Does the jet fall? No: it glides. This video explains what an airliner still has when the engines stop (glide, batteries, the APU and the ram air turbine), why losing both engines almost always needs a shared cause, and three real flights that survived it: British Airways Flight 9 in volcanic ash (1982), Air Canada's "Gimli Glider" that ran out of fuel (1983), and US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson (2009), plus BA38's fuel-ice landing at Heathrow (2008). 0:00 Silence at 3,000 feet 0:40 Why it doesn't fall 2:13 What still works 3:35 How two engines die at once 4:47 Ash at 37,000 feet 6:08 The jet that ran dry 7:38 Three and a half minutes 9:24 Back in your seat About the numbers: the opening is a hypothetical framing of a real event (US Airways 1549). Glide ratio "around 17 to 1" is a commonly cited figure for a clean A320-family jet; real glide range depends on weight, wind and configuration. "About nine miles" is simple arithmetic from about 2,800 to 3,000 ft at 17:1 in still air, flying straight. "About a hundred miles from 35,000 ft" is the same arithmetic. The 8 lb bird is the largest single-bird size in the current US engine certification rule (14 CFR 33.76) for the biggest engines; for that test the engine must not fail in a hazardous way, rather than keep producing thrust. BA9: all four engines flamed out at about 37,000 ft; the first restart came at about 13,500 ft roughly 13 minutes later. Gimli: the crew used 1.77 lb/L where kg/L (about 0.8) was needed; the measured glide was about 12:1. 1549: bird strike at about 2,818 ft; ditching about three and a half minutes later at about 125 knots (about 140 mph); the NTSB found that starting the APU early kept a primary electrical source and the fly-by-wire protections. Diagrams and the New York map are simplified illustrations. Sources: NTSB, Aircraft Accident Report AAR-10/03, US Airways Flight 1549: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/a... Wikipedia, US Airways Flight 1549: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airw... Wikipedia, British Airways Flight 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British... Wikipedia, Gimli Glider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_G... Wikipedia, British Airways Flight 38: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British... eCFR, 14 CFR 33.76 Bird ingestion: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14... Airbus Safety First, green dot (best lift-to-drag) speed: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/contro... Animation is original and drawn in code. Narration uses a local text-to-speech voice (Kokoro, bm_george) and is AI-generated. #engineering #aviation #howitworks