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For instance an engine separated from aircraft (though most unlikely 1E-13 probability) or wing got damaged, how is it reported to the pilot?

Will it be reported as 'Engine Fail' or 'Left Wing Fail'? If so, how is pilot supposed to know if it is a functional failure or a structural failure?

user2927392
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    The cockpit windows provide really good information about the state of the airframe. – abelenky Mar 31 '16 at 15:35
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    @abelenky - on a C172, perhaps... not so much in a 747 or A380. See Quantas Flight 32, for example, or El Al Flight 1862 - in neither case could the pilots properly inspect the damage from the cockpit. For QF32 the third pilot went to inspect through the passenger windows, for LF1862, they couldn't inspect it at all (cargo 747) and crashed, partially as a result of not being able to understand the damage properly – Jon Story Mar 31 '16 at 15:55
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    @fooot while similar, I don't agree that this question is a duplicate of the one you posted: they both address very different kinds of failure, and the answers on that question (or the one it itself is marked as a duplicate of), do not answer this question. Voting to leave open – Jon Story Mar 31 '16 at 15:58
  • I would think the pitch of your co-pilot's voice would indicate a problem of this severity. More seriously, would anyone bother to set the reserved code on the transponder for example? – Andy Mar 31 '16 at 16:09
  • @JonStory seems to me like they're both asking about what happens when an engine falls off, not sure how the two are very different kinds of failure. – fooot Mar 31 '16 at 16:20
  • This mentions losing an engine as one example of structural failure, but is about more generic structural failure. There's no answer elsewhere about 'how does the pilot know if the last 3 feet of the wing snaps off?' For example. Take the focus off the word engine and it's quite a different query to my eyes – Jon Story Mar 31 '16 at 16:22
  • @JonStory you may have a point there... maybe it should be edited to make it more distinctly different. The answer is pretty much the same regardless... most things will have no specific warning, but would have to be deduced from the failures of related systems. – fooot Mar 31 '16 at 16:31
  • Incidentally, astonishingly engine separation procedures do exist (a very general document for turboprops): http://www.cast-safety.org/pdf/1_basics.pdf – Andy Mar 31 '16 at 16:44
  • The linked duplicate question is itself closed as a duplicate of yet another question – TomMcW Mar 31 '16 at 16:50

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