In my time riding commercials airlines I’ve had engines fail on take-off and in-flight. No big deal.
Now, when flying F-15Es, had loss of engine due to a bird-strike that hit at about 540kts flying low level (500’). Yikes.
Flying A-10s I’ve lost an engine due to loss of oil pressure. . .seized up while on final while configured for a practice engine-out (single engine) approach.
Knew an A-10 pilot that lost an engine due to a tree strike. . .yes, he hit a tree and the jet kept flying but with one less engine.
They were flying out of Baltimore and were on the busy local ATC freq when he hit a tree. . .he made a radio call: “Hey Lead, I’ve just hit a tree and lost an engine”
The normally chatty local ATC went totally silent when he made that call.
An Israeli F-15 lost a wing in a collision and landed safely. I saw a photo of it and sure enough the wing was gone. Obviously something was going on her.
I don’t know much about avionics but the part of the plane from which the wing is attached looks like it has a lot of lifting ability by itself.
Well I’ve never flown an A-10 or anything like that.
The plane that had its engine caught on fire was a US Air plane with two propellers...yes propellers. I rode these things from Birmingham to Atlanta and back. I saw the engine on fire, but the pilot must have quickly shut off the fuel, and it went out - and the flight attendant announced we were having a ‘minor mechanical problem’.
We landed at a small airport - but it looked like the ending of the movie Airplane - with all sorts of fire trucks lined up. They looked disappointed the landing went smoothly. I don’t know why they were so concerned - we were only 30 minutes into the flight, from Atlanta. If there was some range issue that prevented us from getting to Birmingham, they could have turned us around to Atlanta...but it was more than that, we landed in Nowhere, Georgia.
Here is the flight, where an engine failure led to loss of all controls:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
And the incredible video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCTrs9mKmhc