How far can a 747 fly on one engine?

Question

How far can a 747 fly on one engine?

Answer 1

A failure of 3 out of the 4 engines would be extremely rare, and the cause would probably be something that would also cause the fourth engine to shut down before long.

If you did find yourself flying on one engine, you would not shut the one engine down.  The airplane is designed to be controlled with asymmetric thrust, and it will not "lean to one side," as one answerer put it.  You would want to keep as much power as possible for as long as possible.

One engine would not produce enough power to maintain altitude, but it could reduce the rate of forced descent to something that would allow a safe glide to landing.  The exact amount to which it would limit descent would depend on the load and atmospheric conditions.

The bottom line is you might stretch your glide to several hundred miles, and there are few places on earth where you would not be able to find an airport where you could land safely or at least a nice big soybean field where you could bump it in and walk away from it.

The average soybean farmer would find this quite annoying, but the loss of life should be little or none, and the airplane would probably come through in repairable condition.

But the key answer is that loss of three engines is so rare as to be unheard of.

Answer 2

One engine isn't going to be able to produce anywhere near enough thrust to maintain or gain altitude/speed.

The pilots most times will probably opt to shut down that last engine to avoid the plane leaning to one side.

This is part of the reason airliners fly at high altitudes, because they can usually glide a good distance from tens of thousands of feet.

Answer 3

a 747 cannot fly with one engine. A sinlge engine does not provide enough thrust. With 2 turbofan aircraft like the 737, they can fly with one engine, but thats only in a  short distance if there is an emergency

Answer 4

It depends on the cargo load, the altitude, and many other factors like wind direction and weather.  At a guess up to maybe 200 miles.

Answer 5

Far enough to arrive at the scene of the airplane crash.

Answer 6

all the way to the scene of the crash.... bet we'll beat the paramedics by a half hour.

Answer 7

Right into the ground.

Answer 8

All the way to the site of the Crash.

Props to R. White

Answer 9

Until it runs out of fuel at which point it changes to a rock.

It can glide, though, from 35,000 feet, for almost 200 miles.

A B747 is capable of staying aloft on one engine.

Answer 10

u tell me

Answer 11

Don't know about 1 engine, but did witness a sight @ SFO about '77 or '78.  Was working on West side of field.    One afternoon, we heard one @#$# of a racket from a 747.  We turned around in time to see a PanAm 747 barely getting off the ground from rwy 28.  It cleared the United maintenance hanger by at least 20 feet after 12K feet of runway!  It was climbing so poorly it had to make a slight right bank to avoid the Daly City hills ~ 5 miles from runway!

Turns out it lost two engines at once (1 & 3 if I remember).  It was able to make it out over the ocean, dump fuel and return without further incident.  That was the day PanAm almost merged with United!

I can't picture the aircraft straight and level on one engine.

Answer 12

It depends on what altitude it is at.

Answer 13

A 747 can fly 5,000 miles on 3 engines.

There are many different versions of the 747, from the initial 747-100 to the 747-400 and the 747-8.  I'm sure the answer is different for each one.

I've stared this question.  We will see if anyone can really answer it.