Really, it's OK if your airliner loses an engine

Over the weekend, both engines on a Singapore Airlines Airbus A330-343 lost power while cruising at 39,000 feet.

The crew was able to restart the engines but not before the aircraft lost 13,000 feet of altitude.

Fortunately, no one was injured, and the flight continued safely to its destination.

Airliner do sometimes lose power to both engines.

But it's a rare occurrence — these days, virtually unheard of.

What does happen, with slightly greater frequency, is the loss of a single engine.

Most of the time the pilot diverts to an emergency-landing location and no one is injured.

But there have been occasions when pilots chose to fly on to their destination instead of turning around.

In 2005, British Airways Flight 268, routed to London, lost one of its four engines while taking off from Los Angeles International Airport.

Instead of returning to LAX, the pilot and his Boeing 747-400 continued toward Heathrow Airport. But because of unfavorable winds and operating conditions that caused the plane to burn too much fuel, the jumbo jet didn't have the gas to reach London and made an emergency landing in Manchester.

Long-distance and transoceanic flights have traditionally been flown by three- or four-engine wide-body airliners. This is because when it comes to the engine count on an airliner, aviation thinking dictates that there is safety in numbers.

But as modern turbofan engines have become more reliable, engine failures have become far less common. As a result, most airlines have turned to twin-engined mini-jumbos that are more fuel-efficient.