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It’s being reported there was an “engine failure”. I’d assume that engine failure and fire detection systems are pretty good, not to mention that pilots train on engine fires/failure and single engine procedures regularly.

Are there situations where pulling the fire handle to extinguish a fire or shutting down an engine wouldn’t be adequate to alleviate some sort of grave failure?

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If the turbine disk disintegrates, it's liable to slice through the entire width of the airplane. This can sever all sorts of connections -- there have been crashes due to this in the past.

It's an unlikely thing to happen today, or ever, but it would certainly account for the rapid crash.

IIRC engine cowling is supposed to contain most catastrophic failures, obviously there have been situations where this doesn't happen so no idea how stringent those requirements are

Cowling could contain a single blade failure, but not a full disk failure.

Not really on an engine failure, and we have two fire extinguishers per engine so if it doesn't work the first time you can pull the second one.

Of course if you have a whole wing on fire pulling the engine fire extinguisher isn't going to help much. Luckily that doesn't really happen.

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