Losing An Engine Without Realising: The Story Of Northwest Airlines Flight 5

When you hear stories about an aircraft ‘losing an engine,’ you probably think of the loss being in terms of engine power, due to some sort of fault or malfunction. But what about when an aircraft physically loses an engine by detaching from it altogether? As it happens, just such a thing occurred back in January of 1990, involving a Northwest Airlines 727 that was en route from Miami to Minneapolis.