El Al flight 28 from Newark to Tel Aviv diverted to JFK yesterday after experiencing a left engine failure.
The 787-9 Dreamliner 4X-EDH was delivered to the airline in October 2018.
You can listen to the full ATC audio below. The pilots did an excellent job staying calm, providing the data requested, and keeping up with the numerous required frequency changes during the diversion to JFK. He only once slipped into Hebrew, changing fuel for delek at one point.
But even with all that flying, it still made it from Newark to JFK in under 2 hours, which I suppose can beat vehicular traffic at peak times.
Planes are designed to fly and land safely with one engine, but it was still lucky that the problems occurred so soon after takeoff.
The Newark to JFK routing brought back good memories of DansDeals seminars, where I often talked about “The Verrazano” as a codename for booking a flight from Newark to JFK for 10K miles in coach or 25K miles in business class.
The El Al flight also had to do a fuel dump to land safely:
In DansDeals seminars I also talked about fuel dumping, like this 613 fuel dump, though I was referring to the practice of dumping the fuel surcharges off airfare, not dumping actual fuel.
At any rate, we’re all glad that the El Al flight landed safely. The plane, 4X-EDH, is now back en-route from JFK to Tel Aviv operating as El Al flight 10, scheduled to arrive at 8:19am local time Thursday.
Were you on yesterday’s El Al flight 28?
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35 Comments On "Listen To The ATC Audio Of Yesterday’s El Al Mayday Call After Engine Failure"
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Wow. Their English is atrocious for pilots who graduated IAF….
QUITE SURPRISING!
What? they sounded just fine.
No it’s not, it’s actually quite good…they are born and bred Israelis and are communicating very well..you should hear some pilots from other nationalities…
It’s horrible.
If you recall the diversion to greenland – ATC couldnt understand the pilots
not all El Al pilots are IAF graduates
Better than many Americans,,,
Anyone know why they have to keep changing frequencies?
That’s the way it worked in aviation. You switch in and out of sectors. Then ground , tower , approach etc…
Different zones of airspace have different air traffic controllers in different facilities. There’s ground and tower at the airport itself, then Tracon departure/approach which is more local, and then there are 22 air route traffic control Centers, which cover the US for higher altitudes. There are multiple zones at each facility, with different controllers. As a plane flies through different zones, they go through ground, tower, departure, center, approach, tower and ground, and will probably be switched from controller to controller as they proceed. Each controller has their own frequency, and a plane gets ‘handed off’ from one zone to another via frequency change so they will be talking to the right controller. The frequencies are listed in the charts and in computers pilots use, and are read to the pilots as they are handed off.
Air traffic controllers have a certain sector that they are in charge of, when an aircraft leaves an area they hand a plane off to the next air traffic controller who works that sector,even in am emergency for the most part
B’H. Reminds me of the days when I could listen to ATC on United. I know all of the lingo and different ‘centers’. The Pilot kept his cool.
@Mayer when they leave a sector, a new sector takes over. Boston Center is very close to NY Center.
Anyone can listen to ATC. Just google.
Losing one engine is a mayday?
Yes. It’s one engine away from no engines.
True on two engine aircraft. Remember, the 747s and 380s ( also avroliner, DC-10/MD-11 and L1011 of the past) of this world have more engines to take the load. One of those could and has crossed the atlantic with one engine out. It does lead to flying lower and more fuel consumption.
If the plane was further out over the Atlantic Ocean (past the point of “no return”), then they would have continued on to the nearest airport in that direction. I doubt they would have attempted to continue all the way to Tel Aviv, even if the plane “could” have made it.
You also don’t know why the engine failed. It could be because of a fuel leak, and the second engine could flame out soon after.
joking? on a twin jet? heck yes.
Would you like to be on a flight that one of the engines go??? Cmon
I take it you were not on the plane…
Curious why JFK and not Boston, they seem to have been closer to Boston?
Most likely because they have more planes readily available at JFK than they do in Boston.
Closest is not necessarily easiest to land at. They have to maintain a safe descent rate which sometimes makes it easier to go to a farther airport without having to circle as much
Correct, they need time to safely descend and time to dump fuel.
I was on this flight and they rebooked for today 2pm and they said the plane is coming from Tel Aviv so it probably doesn’t have to do with having another aircraft the pilot said something about bad weather in Newark but the reason for landing in JFK was probably because they tried fixing it first on the spot and that’s where they have their people
Is that safe to be up and running so fast?and what cause the failed engine?
787’s are rated to ETOPS-330, which means they are capable of flying at least 5.5 hours on one engine. They could have pretty much flown to Europe if they wanted to. (Although, for safety’s sake, they generally land at the nearest airport when they lose an engine.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
I was on this same flight on November 2nd and after we were on the runway want about to take off the engine blew and we had to get towed back to the gate.
They were trying to fix it but after an hour they canceled our flight and deplaned.
I was relieved and grateful they realized this last minute before we took off. but I wonder if there’s any connection to this and if it’s the same plane and same engine
On a side note, they rescheduled the flight from Thursday to motzei shabbos and automatically gave everyone a ticket.
but the timing wasn’t good for me and I couldn’t get in touch with them over the phone to cancel before shabbos, it so I tried cancelling online but they only offered a voucher and no way to get a complete refund. So I just took the voucher since I didn’t want to be stuck with the ticket and not show up and loose everything. I’m disappointed they didn’t have the refund option online.
But then the following will I tried reaching elal and explaining what happened and told them I want a full refund.
After a lot of back and forth and them telling me I can’t get a refund since I ‘choose the voucher’ option, they said since I booked with Chase rewards I have to talk to them, so I called them and they gave me all my points back. I also paid cash with my chase ink for an upgrade and told them what happened and they refunded me the $600 for the upgrade.
So I have my points and cash back, but…… the voucher is still valid for the full amount of the ticket.
I tried asking El Al what the story is and if I’m allowed to use the voucher but i haven’t heard back, it’s been over a week. Any thoughts?
I found that communicating via their WhatsApp is best. +972 3‑977‑1111
Stop asking so many Q’s and just enjoy that extra voucher 😉
Can anyone explain why it takes until 2pm the next day for them to have a plane available? There was no one to talk to in the whole airport when the finally sent someone to the gate where we were located he wasn’t helpful at all and stormed out after a few minutes while all el Al people by the counters said that he is the one who is taking care
Probably because he had a hundred angry people screaming at him, istead of being thankful the pilot made the right decision and they didn’t crash in the ocean.
I was on this flight. The pilots did a great job landing the plane smoothly and safely. If you didn’t know there was a problem you couldn’t tell from the landing. My disappointment was not with the pilot or crew. They were excellent. The El Al operations who handled our check in the next day was very poor and unprepared. Even though they had a list of everybody who was coming back the process was like a brand we check in. The 2 pm takeoff didn’t happen till 3:30 pm. It took over 2 hours to check our bags.
I was on the flight. Crew did not communicate any concern at all. I was alarmed when I saw what seemed to be a smoking engine, which a seatmate explained to be a fuel dump.
I was on that aircraft that same morning TLV-EWR (LY025). Great flight… No sign of any issues
If you listen carefully the pilot begins dumping fuel before he was given permission from atc