Leaving on a jet plane
How to die in a 747 jumbo jet crash by way of twin engine failures over the Himalayas.
Z,
Thank you for the descriptions of your ChatGPT adventures, they were illuminating to say the least. I asked ChatGPT if anything you alleged sounded even remotely possible. It negated every allegation. Maybe you were using a knock-off version? I know there's been a proliferation of GPTs in the recent weeks, and you always have to check to make sure you're getting bona fide quality. Anecdotally, I couldn't help but to notice that certain substance decriminalization has coincided with your stories about errant chatbots. Again, I just want to stress the importance of high quality.
But I digress. You wanted to talk about planes:
I want to know what it would be like to die in a plane crash, on a 747, double engine failure over a mountain range
I've actually been talking a lot about commercial jet crashes lately. My girlfriend has developed a recent anxiety around flying, and we've had long conversations about the safety of all types of commercial aircraft. These talks about risks and dying usually happen over a drink and a smoke, and I think we've started to make progress. The key to overcoming any fear is to gain understanding, because the only true fear is the fear of the unknown.
I suspect, however, that your prompt has less to do with fear and more to do with a morbid curiosity. I'm more than happy to indulge your morbidity, but I fear I may disappoint. To die in a 747 crash caused by double engine failure would actually be pretty hard to accomplish, unless the engine failure coincided with all three pilots on board committing suicide or some other similar catastrophic coincidence unrelated to the aircraft itself. Let me explain why:
The 747 is a quad-engine, wide-bodied commercial jet, with an incredibly long and storied (and safe) operational record. Over its 60+ years of commercial operation, hundreds of millions of souls have been transported, and only about 3000 have died from crashes. Most of these were entirely due to human error, rather than any fault of the 747 design. In the vast majority of cases where 747s have experienced dual engine failure, the plane is happily and easily piloted to a safe emergency landing at the nearest landing strip. If a single engine fails in flight, many times the 747 won't be diverted, as the remaining three engines are more than capable of getting the job done, so to speak. (Coincidentally, this exact situation happened to my mother on a transatlantic flight to Milan in the 90s).
The fact of the matter is, the 747 will fly just fine without two of its four engines. In fact, all engines on the 747 are designed to cleanly separate from the wing in cases where there's extreme stress on the engine. Let's look at one of my favorite 747 crashes of all time, El Al Flight 1862. El Al experienced catastrophic engine failure. Engine 4 separated from the wing, flew a short distance on its own, then crashed into engine 3. This caused engine 3 to be torn from the wing, along with 33 feet of wing's leading edge (i.e. a very important part of the wing). In the cockpit, the pilots noticed power to both engines was no longer available, but that was it. Good old El Al chugged along, lighter 2 engines and a good part of the leading edge, its pilots none the wiser.
Unfortunately, El Al ended up crashing, but that crash really happened as a result of how well it was flying given the circumstances. The pilots didn't suspect anything was seriously wrong, didn't realize they were missing two engines and some of the wing, and turned the plane around for an emergency landing; when they engaged the flaps is when they discovered something was more seriously amiss. Gone with those 33 feet of leading edge, there was included a good chunk of the plane's hydraulic system, which could no longer engage the flaps for that wing. The plane became uncontrollable and crashed. There were only four souls on board, all pilots. Unfortunately the plane did crash into an apartment building, killing several dozen inhabitants. As horrific as that certainly was, the plane technically didn't crash due to engine failure, and those renters technically didn't die in a plane crash, but rather succumbed to uniquely hazardous living conditions.
This is a digression, as interested as I'm sure you are in the minutiae. Let's treat your prompt. "I want to know what it would be like to die in a plane crash, on a 747, double engine failure over a mountain range". It's a hard task, but perhaps we can find a way to make it work.
Since we've determined that dual engine failure on its own won't get the job done, the key may lie in the mountains. When commercial flights experience engine failure en-route, and don't have an immediate bailout option, they have to descend to a lower cruising altitude and shoot for the nearest landing option. Commercial jets typically cruise around forty thousand feet, and this altitude becomes unmaintainable with fewer engines. With two of its four engines, a 747 would have to descend from a comfortable cruising altitude of forty thousand to a more pedestrian twenty thousand, where the air is thicker and it can make do with less thrust. Unfortunately for us, this doesn't help our crash scenario much. The tallest ranges in the Americas won't bother our hypothetically nerfed 747 with twin engine failure, with the Andes averaging just over 13,000 feet, and the Rockies coming in slightly higher at 14,000. The twin engine 747 that could can and will happily cruise over those peaks, even lighter half its jets.
To figure this out, we'll need to cross the Atlantic, and go back in time.
The Silk Road was a place you could buy LSD on the internet the historical route from Europe to the Indian subcontinent, which had to wind through the treacherous valleys of the Himalayas, Earth's soaring giants. In the modern day, the Silk Road is reincarnated in the form of flight route L888, which mirrors the fabled road, just in the sky. L888 tracks through the Himalayas, and with an average height well over 22,000 feet, an ailing 747 would not be able to comfortably cruise above the peaks. Instead, pilots must have a bailout route planned. In fact, for flight plans to be scheduled for L888, airlines must file detailed bailout plans with all major nations traversed, 90 days in advance. Every option is meticulously plotted, pilots fly thousands of hours of simulated bails, and each minute of progress is tracked via GPS by no fewer than 3 world powers. In other words, pilots flying L888 are well-prepared for the worst.
Luckily, there's still a way we can make this work. If we optimize all variables for your death, we can kill you in a 747 dual engine failure crash in the Himalayas with a bit of added creativity.
Picture yourself on the plane. You've sat yourself in the forward third of the aircraft, statistically a location you're more likely to perish in the event of a crash. You've left your seat-belt unclasped, and the overhead bin is open to optimize for flying debris. You are, of course, on route L888, high over the Himalayas. Two engines of your Boeing 747 jumbo jet fail.
As your 3 pilots begin executing the drawdown, the ice-covered peaks begin to rise around you. The air here is thin. The weather is notoriously unforgiving. Yet the 747 flies on. Masterful engineering, meticulous preparation, and good old fashioned redundancy keep the old bird cruising along. The fact of the matter is, your pilots know what to do. Only the most experienced captains get to fly L888. Preparation prevails. The plane is capable, indestructible, even. You fly on.
As you descend into the nearest option for emergency mountain landing, the fear rises in your throat. You won't die on this flight. Even with two engines gone, with mountains all around, this plane won't crash. You can see the running lights stretching out through the porthole windows, and a tear rolls down your cheek. You know the landing is your last hope. As mind-numbingly safe as commercial aviation is, even in the mountains and even with two engines useless, you know that the landing is where you could possibly redeem the project. Landings are the most dangerous part of any flight, where man's most graceful machine, its mechanical bird, icarus from steel, has the highest chance of crashing and burning. It's a slim chance, but you hold on to it with everything you have, you try to will the crash into existence.
Your trusty 747 approaches the runway (typically no more than 5000 feet for high mountain airports). Even with this paltry strip, landing is possible. Boeing were thorough in their tests, and the aircraft has been proven capable to land in as short a distance as 4800 feet in emergency situations. With the flaps fully engaged, the craft slows, and the pilots toggle every option for slow flying and immediate braking upon touchdown. The captain comes over the PA, calling for everyone on board to remain calm, and brace for a hard landing. You stand on your seat, arms held wide, eyes shut to the inevitable.
As the wheels of the jumbo jet touch down on the short mountain runway, your pilots lock the brakes and engage the jets towards reverse thrust. You're thrown into the semi-plush headrest of exit row Economy Plus seating, but the cushions are soft and you fall to the floor with no major injuries. This is not going to work. You are going to fail.
The Himalayan winds rush down from the heavens to save your project. As rubber screeches on frozen asphalt, the engine-less wing of the big metal plane is pushed skyward, unbalanced and unusually light. The missing engines mean that the aerodynamics of landing have changed. Your pilots, prepared as they are, have only human reaction times and a flight computer that is operating beyond its capabilities. An opportune gust of cold mountain wind, commonly exceeding 100 miles an hour in this part of the world, adds to the situation. The opposite wing teeters on the brink, and then metal touches asphalt at 170 miles per hour.
The 'crash' is less dramatic than you would expect. Planes are sturdy things, and the 747 is no exception. As the wingtip drags across the ground, the big bird is pulled off the runway into the runoff. There is bumping and grinding and all of the bags fall from the overhead bin, but unfortunately none strike you fatally. The starboard landing gear fails from lateral stress as the plane veers off, and she kneels. Sparks fly. Metal screeches, torn from the fuselage. The whole thing is over in ten seconds.
The emergency slides deploy as designed, and you're able to exit the aircraft with little fuss. These planes are designed to survive viscous water landings in one piece. A bit of scraping isn't going to do much to the structural integrity of the thing. If it were a water landing, there was at least a chance the fuselage would break apart, but since there's no feasible way we could crash a 747 into water in the Himalayas, you're out of luck. You look on forlornly, safe and sound, as the leaking jet fuel ignites. It's cold in the Himalayas, and you enjoy the warmth despite the failure.
Every single 747 ever produced includes just over 600 pounds of ballast, which sits just forward of the wings within the body of the aircraft. Most recently, this ballast has been constructed from a dense steel, but many 747s fly with a different metal. Depleted uranium is incredibly dense, making it very heavy for the amount of space it requires. This is perfect for the application of adding weight to space-constrained things, like 747s. Depleted uranium was the default material used as ballast in 747s until the 1980s. Many planes still fly with this. Yours happens to be one of them. On its own, DU is almost harmlessly radioactive, with a thin coating of lead paint being all that's needed to shield the souls on board from any damaging atomic decay. As the plane is slowly engulfed in a jet-fueled blaze, this lead shielding ignites.
The fire rages, and acrid black smoke fills your lungs. You smile wide and breathe it in.
23 years later, you lie in bed, a sickness of the lungs stealing your last breaths. You remember the uranium, the lead, the fire. You smile again. 747 twin engine failure in the mountains killed you after all, in a roundabout way.