CONTRIBUTED BY ROLLIE BAUMANN
See photos of the engines below

This is just unbelievable.  A three engine takeoff is made only when absolutely necessary to ferry a plane back to a maintenance facility.  And, when this is done there are absolutely no passengers allowed on the aircraft.  This airline should never be allowed to operate outside of their home country.

Chinese Airlines

For anybody who is not familiar with a jet  engine, a jet fan blade should be perfectly smooth. You might want to think twice the next time you fly on a Chinese airline.

A pilot for a Chinese carrier requested permission and landed at FRA (Frankfurt, Germany)  for an unscheduled refueling stop. The reason became soon apparent to the ground crew: The Number 3 engine had been shutdown previously because of excessive vibration, and because it didn't look too good. It had apparently been no problem for the tough guys back in China as they took some sturdy straps and wrapped them around two of the fan blades and the structures behind, thus stopping any unwanted windmilling (engine spinning by itself due to airflow passing thru the blades during flight) and associated uncomfortable  vibration caused by the suboptimal fan.

Note that the straps are seatbelts....how resourceful!  After making the "repairs", off they went into the wild blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only three engines! With the increased fuel consumption, they got a bit low on fuel, and just set  it down at the closest airport (FRA) for a quick refill.

That's when the problems started:
The Germans, who are kind of picky about this stuff, inspected the  malfunctioning engine and immediately grounded the aircraft. (Besides the seatbelts, notice the appalling condition of the fan blades.) The airline operator had to send a chunk of money to get the first engine replaced  (took about 10 days). The repair contractor decided to do some impromptu inspection work on the other engines, none of which looked all that great either.

Click on Photos for enlargements

The result: a total of 3 engines were eventually changed on this plane before it was permitted to fly again.