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Friday, February 14, 2025

Caribbean Airlines aircraft suffers engine failure en route to Trinidad

by

Brent Pinheiro
17 days ago
20250128
File photo: A Caribbean Airlines aircraft on final approach at Piarco International Airport. (Photo courtesy Brent Pinheiro)

File photo: A Caribbean Airlines aircraft on final approach at Piarco International Airport. (Photo courtesy Brent Pinheiro)

A Caribbean Air­lines ATR 72-600 fly­ing from To­ba­go to Trinidad suf­fered an en­gine fail­ure on Mon­day night while op­er­at­ing its fi­nal flight for the day. The air­craft, reg­is­tered as 9Y-TTC and op­er­at­ing as BW1541, was at the time over the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary on short fi­nal when the #1 en­gine failed, prompt­ing the pi­lot to de­clare “May­day, May­day, May­day. Caribbean Air­lines en­gine fail­ure com­ing in for land­ing. Caribbean Air­lines 1541” to air traf­fic con­trol. In a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia, the cab­in crew could be heard in­struct­ing pas­sen­gers to “BRACE, BRACE, BRACE” as the air­craft pre­pared to land. It land­ed safe­ly at 10:05 pm. The air­craft has since been re­moved from ser­vice for in­spec­tion.

In a re­lease is­sued just af­ter 11 pm, Caribbean Air­lines con­firmed BW1541 “de­clared an emer­gency land­ing” and ar­rived safe­ly at POS. The air­line said, “All the re­quired op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures are be­ing fol­lowed re­gard­ing pas­sen­gers and crew.” 68 pas­sen­gers and 4 crew mem­bers were on­board.

A tur­bo­prop en­gine fail­ure, while rel­a­tive­ly rare, can hap­pen for any num­ber of rea­sons – from me­chan­i­cal is­sues such as an oil leak to ex­ter­nal fac­tors like a bird strike. The ATR 72-600 can fly with on­ly one en­gine op­er­a­tional. When an en­gine fail­ure oc­curs, the air­craft’s pow­er lev­els drop rapid­ly, and the mas­ter warn­ing lights up ac­com­pa­nied by a warn­ing sound. De­pend­ing on which en­gine has failed, the air­craft will be­gin to yaw (move side to side) as the op­er­at­ing en­gine be­gins to push the plane. Pi­lots are reg­u­lar­ly trained and test­ed for emer­gen­cies like these. While is­sues on­board are usu­al­ly trou­bleshoot­ed by way of print or dig­i­tal check­lists, the Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dure (SOP) for this type of emer­gency re­quires the use of mem­o­ry items. Once the en­gine fail­ure is con­firmed, pi­lots work their way through a se­ries of steps (from mem­o­ry) to keep the air­craft sta­ble and un­der con­trol. Dur­ing the crit­i­cal phas­es of flight – land­ing and take­off – pi­lots must com­plete the mem­o­ry items as soon as pos­si­ble as this type of emer­gency is time-sen­si­tive.

This lat­est in­ci­dent comes al­most one week af­ter an­oth­er ATR 72-600, 9Y-TTA, lost a nose wheel while op­er­at­ing a flight be­tween Bar­ba­dos and To­ba­go. The wheel has since been re­cov­ered.

CALCaribbean AirlinesInstagramengine failure


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