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I don't think there's ever been a double-bird-strike incident, though. And what dual engine failures I can think of are due to failure of a shared system (e.g. fuel exhaustion, c.f. Gimli Glider).

[Edit: yeah, yeah, forgot the Tom Hanks movie, sue me. I do wish folks would respond to the much more important point below, which isn't invalidated by a single data point though.]

Constructing solutions for multiple-mode failures like this is a bad engineering smell. Almost always the solution isn't actually helping anything, and often makes things worse in whatever metric you're looking at. In the example here, having four engines makes the chances of total thrust loss lower, but it doubles the chance of a single engine failure. And the literature is filled with incidents of theoretically-survivable single engine failures that led to hull loss as a proximate cause (generally by confusing or panicking the crew).



> I don't think there's ever been a double-bird-strike incident, though.

The most well known double-bird-strike incident is probably the one where Sully landed a plane on the Hudson River.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549#Takeoff...

-edit: ok, everyone had the same thought, haha -


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

There certainly have been bird strikes that disabled all engines.


> I don't think there's ever been a double-bird-strike incident, though

There was this very famous double bird strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549


The Jeju Air crash from late 2024 (still under investigation) also had birds go in both engines.


Everyone's sassing you about forgetting.

But in the video of the plane taking off and crashing, there's no clear, obvious, or tell-tale "poof" of bird turning into exhaust as there often is in bird strikes.

That doesn't rule it out.


Hudson/Sully was dual engine bird strike no?


>Constructing solutions for multiple-mode failures like this is a bad engineering smell. Almost always the solution isn't actually helping anything

Selection bias

The lower the barrier to entry of the subject matter the lower quality the people discussing it. This crap is like the Kardashians for white nerds with stem degrees.

The people with the requisite dozen brain cells to common sense realize these problems are complex and keep their mouths shut.


> I don't think there's ever been a double-bird-strike incident, though.

What? It happens multiple times a year. They made a movie about a famous incident (US Airways Flight 1549). There's even events with four engine strike (Eastern Air Lines Flight 375).


While the counterexample is a real gaff on my part, it's 100% Absolutely Not True that there are "multiple" airliner total thrust failures every year.


That wasn't your claim, though. You spoke of double-bird-strikes, of which there are multiple per year.

So far this year, it's happened at least twice resulting in engine failure.

Jan - Air New Zealand NZ207 - aborted take off following dual bird strikes and both engines damaged.

~~Mar - Ryanair FR 4102 - dual bird strikes on landing resulting in injuries and hull loss.~~

Before that, in December 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashed on landing following dual bird strikes, resulting in the loss of all PAX.

These aren't as rare as you believe they are.


Ryanair FR 4102 apparently happened in 2008, not March. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4102




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