Following up on this, I've posted to the P-I's comment board, and sent email to the reporter.
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"No injuries were reported and no part of the plane was on fire when it landed, Sea-Tac spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt said.
"There was a report of fire," she said. "A lot of times when an engine blows out it will flame out. That's probably what people saw."
I was standing in the parking lot at the Federal Way Barnes & Noble. I was able to see the aircraft.
You could hear it before you saw it closely -- ba-da-DUM, ba-da-DUM. With each sound, one could see flames in the port engine, and on the third beat the flames would be in a long trail. It was almost like an old car backfiring. It did this multiple times.
Now, perhaps that was fuel in the engine igniting in a non-standard way, and thus the engine itself was not precisely "on fire."
But a "blowout" implies a single event. That does not match the cyclical set of events I observed.
I tried to use my cell phone's camera to take a picture, but against the 3PM sky there was too much glare for me to get the shot.
After it passed overhead heading southerly, I saw it do a banked turn towards the west. This would match the reports of the turn taking place just before Tacoma. I also noticed the booms stopped. I kept an eye for a while on the western horizon for any smoke, as I feared the airplane had lost power and augured in.
I'm glad that fear was without merit. But this story does not match what I saw and heard.
no subject
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I was standing in the parking lot at the Federal Way Barnes & Noble. I was able to see the aircraft.
You could hear it before you saw it closely -- ba-da-DUM, ba-da-DUM. With each sound, one could see flames in the port engine, and on the third beat the flames would be in a long trail. It was almost like an old car backfiring. It did this multiple times.
Now, perhaps that was fuel in the engine igniting in a non-standard way, and thus the engine itself was not precisely "on fire."
But a "blowout" implies a single event. That does not match the cyclical set of events I observed.
I tried to use my cell phone's camera to take a picture, but against the 3PM sky there was too much glare for me to get the shot.
After it passed overhead heading southerly, I saw it do a banked turn towards the west. This would match the reports of the turn taking place just before Tacoma. I also noticed the booms stopped. I kept an eye for a while on the western horizon for any smoke, as I feared the airplane had lost power and augured in.
I'm glad that fear was without merit. But this story does not match what I saw and heard.