A StarFlyer Airbus was forced to divert to Kitakyushu Airport last Friday after its left engine lost power. The flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo Haneda went on to land safely without injury to passengers or crew.
StarFlyer flight gets diverted to Kitakyushu Airport
The incident was reported in The Aviation Herald. According to that report, JA21MC, an Airbus A320-200, had 104 passengers and crew onboard when the left engine lost power while climbing out of Fukuoka.
The incident occurred while the Airbus was climbing through FL310. The pilots stopped the ascent, went back to FL24, and prepared to return to Fukuoka. However, the aircraft was diverted to Kitakyushu. The plane landed safely about 75 minutes after departure from Fukuoka.
The leased aircraft came factory fresh to Starflyer eight years ago. Starflyer was using the plane to flight SFJ42, the 09:20 departure from Fukuoka.
The plane appears to have been approximately 17 minutes into the flight and at nearly 10,000 meters when the engine incident occurred. At this point, the aircraft was west of Oku. The flight continued for a further 15 minutes without losing too much altitude, dropping only to about 8,300 meters. As the aircraft reached the southern tip of Awaji Island, it turned around and began heading back towards Fukuoka, the rate of descent increasing. At some point, the plane diverted, and headed to Kitakyushu, a short distance north of Fukuoka.
Kitakyushu is the headquarters for StarFlyer, a Japanese mid-market airline that has been jetting around the country for the past two decades. With the exception of flights to Taiwan, the airline flies to a select range of domestic destinations around Japan. StarFlyer has a fleet of just 13 planes, all A320-200s. It has a blemish-free safety and accident record.
Lurking behind the scene is Japanese heavy hitter, All Nippon Airways. They have an 18% shareholding in the airline.
The Airbus A320 can safely drift for some distance
The Aviation Herald noted the Airbus “drifted” down to FL240 on Friday in the incident report. The two-engine aircraft can get by quite okay on just one engine. It can even glide for some distance with no engines on. The typical unencumbered A320 has a glide ratio of 17:1. That means it can travel 17 meters forward for every 1 meter of descent. JA21MC was at nearly 10,000 meters when it lost left engine power. Theoretically, simple maths tells us that in a worst-case scenario, losing power to both engines, the A320 could glide for about 170 kilometers.
That equation assumes a straight approach to an airport with no turns and no decrease in airspeed. In reality, the distance an A320 can cover with engine power might be significantly less than the 17:1 ratio suggests. However, in a controlled environment, pilots frequently use glides with the engines idling. Most flights on modern jets run their engines on idle for a portion of their descents. Regular air travelers will know it’s not unusual for jets to begin their descent 50 or 60 miles away from the destination airport and drift in with minimal engine thrust.
Since landing at Kitakyushu Airport on Friday morning, JA21MC has remained on the ground there.
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