Fatal Crash Prompts Marines To Change Osprey Flight Rules « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary
Originally Posted by Breaking Defense
Investigators are still studying the training flight mishap in which an
MV-22B Osprey‘s hard landing killed two Marines aboard. They have yet to officially declare the crash’s cause, but BD has learned that the plane suffered reduced power in both engines and a compressor stall that knocked the left one out entirely after spending an unusually long 45 seconds hovering over a dusty landing zone.
So a power loss/engine failure does appear to be the issue in the Hawaii crash. Interesting they said both engines suffered some sort of power loss before the left engine totally failed. The engine air partial separator system on it isn't the greatest and like the article mentions they've been testing an improved inlet to fix it. To get a rapid power loss though(basically over the course of a single flight operating in a dusty/sandy environment) that system would have to fail completely. The engines in normal service aren't replaced until they show a reduction in power down to 95% though. So its hard to say if they mean in this case the remaining operating engine experienced a power loss below that level or that it showed a power loss but was still within the acceptable range. Trivial to the end result though, even on a brand new engine making over 100% of its rated power they wouldn't have been able to hover in this case, to heavy.