2022-10 · NASA ASRS report 1939282
B737-700 Flight Crew reported autopilot problems and an uncommanded in flight shut down of the right engine during a ferry flight of an aircraft scheduled for dis-assembly. The engine restarted on it's own; so the flight crew continued to destination airport and landed.
The flight was conducted by company department as a ferry operation of a former 737-700 from ZZZ to ZZZ1 for dis-assembly. The flight was unremarkable throughout cruise at FL410. We started a descent approximately 130 NM west of ZZZ1. With both engines near idle; passing through FL280 (approximately 85 NM west of ZZZ1); we noted the RT A/P disconnect and an ELEC illuminate on the SYS ANNUNCIATION PNL and the RT GEN DRIVE illuminate on the OVHD. The First Officer (FO) stated 'I think we lost the generator'. I asked him to start the APU. As I fed in left rudder; I looked at the UPPER ENG Display; an ENG FAIL was annunciation over the RT EGT. I stated; 'I think we lost the engine' and disconnected the auto-throttles. After the APU was running; the FO put the right APU generator switch on the busses. We turned to the engine and noted an auto-start was in progress. The RT Engine restarted on its own and at idle all indications were normal. We discussed the flame out and restart event. We elected to leave the right engine at idle and configure for a precautionary single engine landing at Flaps 15. The FO completed the One Engine Approach/Landing Checklist. We advised ATC that engine had flamed-out but was now restarted. We decided not to [request priority handling] and did not ask for traffic priority. With winds from the north; we asked for and received the ILS Runway XX into ZZZ1. We completed the approach and landing at flaps 15 with the right engine in idle. I elected to use reverse thrust only on the left engine. We taxied to the south end of the ramp and were met by maintenance and shutdown. Post flight inspection revealed no visible damage to the right engine. Company department management; Dispatch and Maintenance Control were briefed on the incident.
I was the Pilot Monitoring (PM) on Aircraft X which was a non-revenue flight to ferry a former 737NG from ZZZ to ZZZ1 for final disposal. The flight was being operated under a Special Airworthiness Certificate. Brief; Preflight; and climb were all nominal for the transit. About 110nm from ZZZ1 on a descent from 41;000 ft. while passing 28;000 ft. with engines at idle the autopilot B system kicked off. At that time; I announced looking at the initial blue lights on the overhead panel that the #2 generator had come offline; and we commenced APU startup. Simultaneously while the APU was starting up; the pilot flying started to have to feed in trim and announced we lost the #2 Engine. That timeline from initial autopilot off to announcing #2 engine had failed was about 7 seconds. Engine display instruments indicated Eng Fail where the #2 engine EGT is normally displayed. About 30 seconds after the initial autopilot kickoff; we noted the #2 engine had auto restarted as designed. Naturally as this was going on; we had an ATC switchover and once we checked in with the new ATC frequency we notified them we had an engine flameout which had restarted and there was no assistance required at this time. We continued our descent to final destination of ZZZ1; while doing so; I as the PM; ran the Engine Fail checklist. As a crew we decided it was best to leave the #2 engine at idle and plan for a precautionary flaps 15 approach to ZZZ1. I continued to run the non-normal landing distance calculation for 1 engine inoperative to ensure we had adequate distance to land if the engine quit as well as run the one engine inoperative landing non-normal. We also communicated that if we had any other anomalies in the descent we would [request priority handling] but as the aircraft had no system anomalies and the engine was operating adequately at idle no assistance was required and as ZZZ1 is a small regional airport there was no other traffic in the vicinity so priority was not an issue. Landing conditions were a 91k aircraft gross weight (no pax nor cargo); engines had been re-rated at 24k for the flight; and a good 12 kt headwind we concluded aircraft performance was not a factor should a single engine scenario develop.
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Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
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