In the aviation industry today, it has now become part of everyday normal operations for twin engine aircraft to cross the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and also deserts. In this article, I will guide you on how ETOPS works in my simple words.

Nowadays, most of twin engine airliners are already certified so that they have to be able to fly normally within an hour of a landing strip/airfield/airport in the event of an emergency (any of the engines failure).Normally in Europe this is not a problem, but over the Oceans and at night in Africa where airfields often close, this could risk a problem (deserts are also considered like oceans). To allow/enable long distance flights with twin engine aircraft, a set of rules were developed by the Civil Aviation Authorities of the world. At first, aircraft have to be built and designed with proven engines. Hours are fed back and monitored by manufacturers and authorities. Before these operations commence the airline has to be certified and assessed as well.

I give one example, the Atlantic Ocean. It would be impossible to fly over this huge ocean using the normal hour restriction. It could be crossed with implementing a two hour restriction (ETOPS-120 rating on its entry into service. ETOPS-180 is only possible after 1 year of trouble-free 120-minute ETOPS experience), however a lot of areas would not be able to be crossed (if only ETOP-120 is used) as they are outside the range of the airports/airfields. For any airline to be able to cross the Mighty Atlantic ocean, it would require at least 138minute of ETOPS certification(ETOPS 120/138 was introduced to tackle this issue)

One more example, we take a flight From USA to Hawaii. Any airline will require 3hours certification as Hawaii to west coast of USA is estimate around 6hours of flying. That's why ETOPS-180 was introduced. So if and airlines is not ETOPS-180 certified, it will have to use a long route via north neared to Greenland and Iceland.

Examples of ETOPS rating are as below:-

• ETOPS-75
• ETOPS-90
• ETOPS-120/138
• ETOPS-180/207 (which covers 95% of the earth's surface)

p/s did you know ETOPS famous acronym ="Engines Turn Off, Passengers Swim" and "Engines Turn or Passengers Swim."

"Yohan Ibrahim" is just a normal aviation enthusiast that has a passion in aviation. If you are a pilot or just an aviation enthusiast like "Yohan", and want to share thoughts and unique perspectives on aviation, come share your aviation experience with "Yohan" at http://www.pilothans.com/. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mohd_Yohan_Ibrahim