Narrative:

On climb out passing FL227; with autopilot on; left engine made a single loud noise; there was a jolt to the airplane and the left EPR rolled back. We disconnected autothrottles and brought left throttle to idle. There was no further noise or vibration. In idle all indications looked normal. Declared emergency with ATC and decided to divert to a nearby by airport. ATC could not have been more helpful. We wanted it; we got it. Made quick PA to passengers and one to flight attendants; said we lost engine and were diverting; not to worry and I'd give more details after running checklists. Told flight attendants it was a yellow emergency. Flight attendants did a great job and all passengers were calm. We sent a short message to dispatch; but frankly; typing one letter at a time while trying to get checklists done and land doesn't work well. We ran the checklists and flew single engine; 28 flap approach. First officer was pilot flying and continued while I ran checklists; including descent; approach and landing. He made an excellent approach and heavyweight; but not overweight; landing. Brake temperatures were around 200 and we used only right reverse thrust. After landing we cleared runway. Fire trucks inspected and saw smoke and sprayed water in engine. We shutdown the other engine; ran the APU for cooling and electrics. After the crash fire rescue equipment (crash; fire; rescue) said we were good we called for a tug. We had great communications with the flight attendants; passengers (numerous PA's) and ATC. Communication with crash fire rescue equipment was not very good. We could hear everything he said; but he didn't seem to hear much of what we had to say. Tower was monitoring and relayed our transmissions.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A MD88's left engine failed during climb so an emergency was declared and the flight diverted to a nearby airport.

Narrative: On climb out passing FL227; with autopilot on; left engine made a single loud noise; there was a jolt to the airplane and the left EPR rolled back. We disconnected autothrottles and brought left throttle to idle. There was no further noise or vibration. In idle all indications looked normal. Declared emergency with ATC and decided to divert to a nearby by airport. ATC could not have been more helpful. We wanted it; we got it. Made quick PA to passengers and one to flight attendants; said we lost engine and were diverting; not to worry and I'd give more details after running checklists. Told flight attendants it was a yellow emergency. Flight attendants did a great job and all passengers were calm. We sent a short message to Dispatch; but frankly; typing one letter at a time while trying to get checklists done and land doesn't work well. We ran the checklists and flew single engine; 28 flap approach. First Officer was pilot flying and continued while I ran checklists; including descent; approach and landing. He made an excellent approach and heavyweight; but not overweight; landing. Brake temperatures were around 200 and we used only right reverse thrust. After landing we cleared runway. Fire trucks inspected and saw smoke and sprayed water in engine. We shutdown the other engine; ran the APU for cooling and electrics. After the CFR (Crash; Fire; Rescue) said we were good we called for a tug. We had great communications with the flight attendants; passengers (numerous PA's) and ATC. Communication with CFR was not very good. We could hear everything he said; but he didn't seem to hear much of what we had to say. Tower was monitoring and relayed our transmissions.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.