On an airplanes engine on the thip of it, why do they have a white spiral drawn on it??

Question

like on a boening 747 and almost any airplane!! it has that white spiral line on the tip of it, what is it?

Answer 1

Most likely to warn the maintenance crew when an engine is running.  A person can be sucked into a running engine.

Answer 2

It makes it easier to tell if the engine is turning or not.  That's all.

To the guy talking about birds...a bird is not going to notice any difference between "big loud thing coming at me at 200mph" versus "big loud thing coming at me at 200mph with a white dot on part of it".

Answer 3

I am certain of this, the spiral tip can be seen by birds and reduces the chance of them flying into the blades during flight. It prevents the engine from being fodded.

An added benefit is for ground crew to know if the engines are running.

Some turbo-props have white and black stripes for the same purpose and most helo's have the tops of their rotor blades in the same black and white.

25 years in the CAF, 8 years experience as a flight safety director.

Answer 4

They're called spinners, and it might not be a white spiral line depending on which engine you look at. Its just there to show engine blade motion and in some cases for weight balance in the engine.

Answer 5

The stripe on the engine spinner serves multiple purposes. Its main function is to lessen, not totally prevent, birds from flying into the engines. We used to call it the "Bird Stripe" for this reason.

It also serves a visual reference for people such as mechanics working around a running engine to be able to tell if the engine is spinning at speed.

Answer 6

it is to tell anyone that can see the spiral that the engine is turning.

people have been sucked down engines before

when the engine is stopped, the direction of the spiral also tells the maintenance people which direction the blades turn in.

it has no effect whatsoever on birds. It does not prevent Foreign Object Damage. only prevents people from walking into it and being turned into mush

Answer 7

To show what direction it spins...

Answer 8

The spiral has been used since WW2 to help ground crew tell which engines are operating and which one aren't. This is especially important in multi-engine planes as the ground crew can't tell because of the noise of the other engines. Also on jets there are no propellers to tell ground crew which engines are on.

Answer 9

It helps to tell whether the fan blades are turning, and when they are not.