Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Ephesians 6:12
Plane catches fire at Columbus airport after bird strikes engine
A bird strike caused the engine of an American Airlines flight to catch fire, forcing pilots to turn around shortly after take-off and land the plane back at John Glenn Columbus International Airport early Sunday morning.
Airport officials said American Airlines flight 1958 landed safely, no one was injured in the incident and the airport was shut down for only a few minutes while the plane returned for the emergency landing. An airport spokesperson couldn't say how many passengers were on flight. The plane left about 7:45 a.m. and was headed for Phoenix when birds struck the engine shortly after takeoff. Airport officials couldn't say how long the plane was in the air before rerouting back to the Columbus airport but it didn't make it out of the Central Ohio area.
Sarah McQuaide, spokesperson for the Columbus airport, said the airport is open and operating as usual and the incident caused only minor delays for other flights.
McQuaide said the incident will be investigated by federal officials. That could be officials from the Federal Aviation Administration or the National Transportation Safety Board.
People across the Columbus area reported hearing strange engine sounds or seeing fire come from the plane's engine on social media. Source
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WSOC) - Passengers on a flight about to take off in North Carolina had a scary view outside their windows as flames shot out from the plane’s wing.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please be calm. Obviously, something happened,” someone can be heard saying over the intercom in Frankie Leggington’s video of the incident.
Leggington was waiting for her flight, American Airlines flight 2288 to Dallas-Fort Worth, to take off on the runway at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport when she heard that sound.
“We were taking off like normal, when the wheels go up, you feel a little bump. Then all of a sudden, you hear an explosion,” Leggington said. Leggington said the scary sound turned into a frightening sight as flames and smoke came out of the wing of the plane.
She said that was when everyone aboard the flight began to panic.
“Nobody knows what’s happening, so it’s the first instinct is the plane is going to blow,” Leggington said. “So, everyone is grabbing their bags, trying to run up and run in the aisle.”
Leggington said she took out her phone to record the view outside of her window seat near one of the emergency exits. “Everyone was trying to panic, but it was like we couldn’t go anywhere,” another passenger, Claire Dundon, said. “That was the biggest scare.”
A spokesperson for American Airlines said the plane had experienced a mechanical issue, but it was unclear what caused the fire.
Passengers said they had to stay on the plane until first responders put out the flames.
The pilot was able to taxi the plane back to the gate using the plane’s power. Source
SpaceX giant rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas (AP) — SpaceX’s giant new rocket exploded minutes after blasting off on its first test flight Thursday and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites. Images showed several of the 33 main engines were not firing as the rocket climbed from the launch pad, reaching as high as 24 miles (39 kilometers). There was no immediate word from SpaceX on how many engines failed to ignite or shut down prematurely.
The booster was supposed to peel away from the spacecraft three minutes after liftoff, but that didn’t happen. The rocket with the spacecraft still attached began to tumble and then exploded, plummeting into the gulf.
Once flying free, the spacecraft was meant to lap around the world, ending with a crash-landing in the Pacific near Hawaii. Instead of a best-case-scenario 1 1/2-hour flight, it lasted four minutes.
What a perfect visual metaphor for everything Elon Musk does #SpaceX
— Tara Dublin ((Got 𝒱ℯ𝓇𝒾𝒻𝒾ℯ𝒹 in 2016)) (@taradublinrocks) April 20, 2023
Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off limits. As it lifted off, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”
Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”
In the weeks leading up to the flight, Musk gave 50-50 odds that the spacecraft would reach orbit.
“You never know exactly what’s going to happen,” said SpaceX livestream commentator and engineer John Insprucker. “But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular end.”
The company plans to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.
At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. The stainless steel rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from the test flight.
The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.
SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flights. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession, so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board. Source
SpaceX is calling it “a rapid unscheduled disassembly”.