This video of a Rejected Take Off (RTO) by Simon Lowe is making the rounds. It shows an Airbus A330 at Manchester Airport aborting take-off at high speed directly after a bang as the right engine fails. The Thomas Cook flight was en route to the Dominican Republic.

It is a lovely textbook case of a good reactions in the cockpit:

The aircraft was an Airbus A330-200. The Thomas Cook flight was departing Manchester Airport for the Dominican Republic. The A330 was travelling at around 110 knots when the right-hand engine, a Rolls Royce Trent 772, fails with a bang.

The Pilot Flying sure was on the ball with this one. There’s no time to assess the problem or think about options. Having decided not to continue the take-off and deal with the problem in the air, the Pilot Flying has only seconds to safely stop the aircraft on the tarmac.

The thrust reversers are activated immediately but just for a few seconds and if you watch the tyres you can see the smoke from the wheel braking. There’s a slight deviation from the centreline as the engine goes and immediate rudder deflection to straighten the aircraft. The Emergency Response vehicles are on their way immediately upon hearing the sound, they are already there by the time the Pilot Not Flying has reported the problem.

Simply amazing.

A quick search on AV-Herald shows that this is not the first instance of engine trouble in that aircraft:

The Aviation Herald Search results for “G-OMYT”

• Thomas Cook A332 at Manchester on Jun 24th 2013, rejected takeoff
• Thomas Cook A332 near Belfast on Nov 17th 2012, engine shut down in flight
• Thomas Cook A332 near Shannon on Nov 9th 2012, engine malfunction
• Thomas Cook A332 over Atlantic on Oct 26th 2012, engine shut down in flight

Simon Lowe was at Manchester Airport that day to film a large cargo plane, almost certainly the visiting Antonov An-225 Mriya . He told the BBC that it was just luck that he caught the footage, but his YouTube channel is full of great aviation videos. He’s probably best known for this detailed video of a birdstrike, also taken at Manchester:

Meanwhile, there’s a second video of the A330 showing the incident from the side. Eddie Leathwood is a young plane spotter who was sad that he was going to miss the visiting Antonov 225 because he was at school. His uncle went to the airport to film the Antonov for Eddie and so he was on site with the camera out when the A330 was taking off.

It was filmed from the Aviation Spotters area, with the kind of helpful commentary you only find in the North of England:

PS: Simon Lowe also got his cargo plane footage. Wow, the Antonov really is huge, isn’t it!