Can the L-1011 Actually Fly on ONE Engine?

Añadido: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Now, this right here is the legendary Lockheed L10 111, which was known for a few things by pilots. First of all, even though it came out in the 1970s, it was extremely modern, could land itself.

[00:00:12]Also, it apparently flew incredibly nicely. After all, Lockheed was more known for fighter jets, and you can even see that kind of heritage in the way this plane flies. Look at the entire horizontal stabilizer moving when we pitch. No other airplane I've seen does this. Now, this plane is also specially known for its engine, the RB211.

[00:00:32]It was the first plane to ever use it.

[00:00:35]And the RB211 is still an amazing engine nowadays. It's used on the rocket, the Ferrari of the sky, the 757 still. And you know what that means? This plane's known for being pretty much overpowered.

[00:00:49]And people ask, did it even need these three engines? Could it have flown on two? And that's what we're going to find out today. maybe even fly on one engine.

[00:00:58]You know, the numbers seem quite promising. You know, we always talk about the thrust to weight ratio, which for the trip 7, which we call extremely overpowered, is the same as the L10 11.

[00:01:12]So, we're going to see some amazing performance already. I mean, look, we can definitely operate at maximum takeoff weight, no problem, from the pretty small LaGuardia Airport. Yes, this one was probably the biggest plane with the largest maximum takeoff weight to ever fly out of the small New York airport. I mean, this is only a 7,000 ft long runway. And yes, despite that, this plane flew here. And that already means something, right? Let's go and see what happens if we give in full power despite the weight being quite high. You know, you would never really estimate this from a 1970s plane. This was back from a time when planes that had cockpits like this flew more or less sluggish. So, let's see. Can we actually take off from a 7,000 foot long runway? And I mean, look at the acceleration at maximum weight. And yes, indeed, this plane does take off using this runway. Once again, maximum takeoff weight. No issue whatsoever. So, we could definitely use even smaller runways with these three engines running. And so when we remove a little bit of the fuel and remove a little bit of packs and remove a little bit of cargo here, make this plane much lighter, I honestly believe that we'll be able to land down here on one of the smallest runway we know on the channel.

[00:02:30]Shane bar. I mean, we've got big brakes on the landing gear. We've got big slats, big flaps, and we've got amazing control here on the pitch. Oh, this plane was so comfortable to fly in as passengers. Can you see that when we move the pitch, the actual spoilers rather move in order to control pitch?

[00:02:49]You can see that being done right here.

[00:02:51]Extremely modern of airplane technology.

[00:02:54]This makes the plane fly even nicely on descent and keeps the plane extremely maneuverable even at slower speeds. So, let's go ahead and figure this out.

[00:03:04]>> Shut up. Oh, yeah. Come on. Let's do it.

[00:03:07]Let's make a nice landing right here. No problem. I'm actually not stressed at all. There we go. Oh, it's maybe been a bit hard, but there we go. We can come in for a full complete stop, especially with these strong reverse thrusters.

[00:03:20]Absolutely no problem whatsoever. And no, we didn't have to do a hard crazy landing. We just landed like that. And honestly, a takeoff will probably not be an issue at all. Even though once again, this is a 600 m long runway and this is kind of stupid. Talking about Stew, what the hell is this? Stop with your co-pilot tips. I'm a pro pilot. No tips needed.

[00:03:41]All right, I'm just waiting for the flaps to come up right now. Looking good. And so we're getting this airplane ready. The engines are warmed up. Let's go full power now and release the brakes after they've reached full power, which happens quite immediately. Yes, the FedEx system on this plane is absolutely incredible. So, let's put the flaps down as we roll. And look at the acceleration. It's just absolutely insane what this airplane can do. So, there we go. Nice little uh takeoff right there. We didn't even use the entirety of the runway, but because maybe because of the of the horizontal stabilizer control right there.

[00:04:19]Absolutely incredible. So, the question is, how many engines? How many engines do we need? Let's find out. You know, for this challenge, we should maybe keep the weight normal, have some normal fuel, have some quite full cabin, and we can just try to take off here from Key West. Not the longest, not the shortest runway in the world either. But what we have is Oh no, engine number two has died, which in this case, yes, is the middle engine. Cuz the idea is, I mean, honestly, this plane is almost 767 size.

[00:04:50]Really? We could probably make this a twin jet aircraft. So, let's go full power. Yes. And yeah, I do expect this airplane to be a little bit more sluggish now, but we'll probably able probably be able to do a normal flight, right? Even with passengers on board.

[00:05:04]Yes, we reached speeds quite slowly.

[00:05:09]Come on. We're at 80 knots now, but it's actually looking all right. This is maybe like a A340300 kind of departure roll. We maybe should have picked a longer runway to be honest, but we might make this work.

[00:05:23]Question mark. So, come on. Um, maybe I did overestimate especially running this airplane on higher weight configurations cuz we wait we just died.

[00:05:33]Well, okay. This is less an airplane problem. This is more of a runway problem.

[00:05:38]All good. Try the same thing now at San Diego, which has quite a few thousand more feet of runway. So, come on. Now, a little bit more try. Come on. Engine number two is dead again. The middle engine. So, let's give full power. And I hope this airplane should be quite forgiving now. Come on. All right. We're already at 80 knots. Um, okay. Yeah, maybe the acceleration is a little bit slow. Uh, we need a little maybe uh I expect this to go a little bit better, but it turns out yes, we kind of do need these. These engines are powerful. So, if one is gone, it's big issue. Um, but let's see. Come on. We can maybe rotate now. Come on. Rotate. Rotate. Rotate.

[00:06:18]Rotate. Rotate. We've kind of exced the whole of San Diego, but we can actually kind of normally fly. Look, this looks like a kind of normal ascend ride here. 150 knots. We can climb stably at a Yeah, actually. You know what? Our vertical speed is actually going up, especially with the landing gear up. This plane actually performs somehow. Not too shabby at all. But yes, we use the whole runway. So, I'm kind of scared what happens. What happens if we fly on only one single engine, you know, will this airplane take off? I guess let's find out. Um, but we need to be a little bit smart cuz after all, we're now very, very slow. So, come on. We might need a long runway here. Los Angeles International. Of course, we could need a good 10,800 ft of concrete.

[00:07:09]Yeah, let's go ahead and wish this airplane luck. So, let's turn off engine number one and number three. So, we've only got the middle engine running now.

[00:07:19]I wonder how good it will perform. I mean, after all, you can see the S duct right here. The engine intake is all the way here, but the actual spinning fan is only in the very tail. Now, unlike what we tested with u two engines, um let's maybe go ahead and uh bring down the weight a little bit. I mean, after all, we're only using one single engine, so we don't need as much fuel. And let's maybe say, "Hey, passengers, please don't bring your cargo very much." And also, please don't bring yourself very much. Let's go do only 50%. And the good thing about this plan is that it's quite lightweight cabinwise. I mean, after all, we have the cathedral cabin. No middle overhead bins. So, that that might be an advantage. Um, let's see what happens if we just crank the middle engine. Full power on that one. Now, it's even though we're giving full power, we can't really hear much. The engine is so far away from us that we don't really we don't really notice it going full power. This might just be the quietest airplane ever on the channel now. But hey, we actually have a little bit of acceleration. I mean, it would definitely be able to taxi on one engine. Flying is maybe a little bit of a different story, though. But hey, we're looking all right. We're actually we're actually speeding up 60 knots and we're already at 70 knots. We got to kind of appreciate that. And around 120 30 we can fly. Uh we're kind of halfway there. God, this airplane is really quiet.

[00:08:37]Um that's like the weirdest part about all this. Okay, we're actually speeding up. We're at 125 knots. This might honestly be flyable. We do need the whole of the runway, but then I'm going to try to see if I can rotate it. Yeah.

[00:08:52]Yeah. Come on. Come on. Yes.

[00:08:55]The actual power of the L1011 has made it so it can genuinely take off. We're definitely going to put the gear up now cuz otherwise we're not going to be able to climb very well. Let's go and put the autopilot to the speed mode right here.

[00:09:08]So, it's going to try to climb with 144 knots set. Let's get the flaps to like 10° in order to reduce the drag. But here we go. After using 10,000 ft of runway, we're actually climbing. We've kind of the climb rate of a Sesna, but somehow somehow it works. We've already reached 1,000 ft above ground as you can see. I don't know how, but yes. All right. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to try to have this airplane level off a little bit so we can gain speed. Mhm. Very smart. 160 knots already. This airplane does gain speed.

[00:09:45]It's perfectly flyable on one single engine. Boom. Look at the acceleration right here. Yes, the airplane does run out full power on one single engine, which might just drain a little bit. But if we speed up the simulator time right here, we can definitely climb. Look at this. 1,200 ft per minute. It's actually quite all right. Now, I wonder what our cruising altitude could be. I mean obviously as the oxygen in the air decreases as we climb. I mean we're already at 9500 ft our performance reduces as well but we're still climbing 800 ft per minute. It's not necessarily very fast but look even now when we increase our simulator speed we're still climbing 17,000 ft. We're definitely now we're approaching flight level altitude.

[00:10:37]Look at this. I mean yes we're at mark 04. which kind of half as slow as this plane should be, but we can cruise. We can fly. A dual engine failure on this plane is absolutely no trouble. Very impressive. The L1011 overpowered a little bit. So, thank you guys so much for watching this video and I'll see you guys tomorrow as always.

[00:10:57]Good night. A special thanks goes out to my members, my supporters. Guns killer, R27, James Dam, That Dude, Anime Gods of Gaming, Derek, Insider Plane, Nishiitsu Finer, Professional Jamal, Ryland Williams, and New York. You've got beautiful names.