Federal aviation regulators order United Airlines to step up inspections of all Boeing 777s equipped with the type of engine that suffered a catastrophic failure Saturday over Denver. United said it was temporarily removing those aircraft from service.
ads came a day after United Airlines Flight 328 had to make an emergency landing at Denver International Airport after its right engine crashed immediately after takeoff. Pieces of the engine casing, a Pratt & Whitney PW4000, rained in suburban neighborhoods.
Separately, Dutch authorities were investigating a similarly striking incident in which a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane dropped engine parts shortly after taking off from Maastricht airport on Saturday, according to Reuters. An airport spokesman said small metal parts had been scattered over the southern city of Meerssen. There was some damage and one woman was injured. He landed safely.
The US plane, with 231 passengers and 10 crew on board, also landed safely. No one on board or on the ground was reported injured, authorities said.
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Steve Dickson said in a statement on Sunday that, based on an initial review of safety data, inspectors “concluded that the inspection interval should be intensified for empty fan blades that are unique to this engine model, used exclusively on Boeing 777 aircraft. “
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The National Council for Transport Safety stated in a separate statement that two of the engine fan blades were fractured and the rest of the fan blades “were damaged”. The NTSB warned that it was too early to draw conclusions about how the incident happened.
Boeing said it recommended that “the operations of the 697 777 in operation and 59 in storage” with Pratt & Whitney engines around the world be suspended “until the FAA identifies the appropriate inspection protocol.”
Pratt & Whitney issued a statement saying it “sent a team to work with investigators” and “is actively coordinating with operators and regulators to support the revised inspection period” of the engines involved.
The video posted on Twitter showed that the engine was completely engulfed in flames while the plane flew through the air. The frozen frames from various videos made by a passenger sitting lightly in front of the engine and posted on Twitter seemed to show a broken fan blade in the engine.
United is the only American airline with Pratt & Whitney PW4000 in its fleet, the FAA said. United said it currently has 24 of 777 in operation.
United said it would work closely with the FAA and the NTSB “to determine what additional steps are needed to ensure that these aircraft meet our stringent safety standards and can return to service.”
The NTSB said the cabin voice recorder and flight data recorder were transported to its Washington lab for data to be downloaded and analyzed. NTSB investigations can take up to a year or more, although in major cases the agency generally publishes some investigative material in the middle of the process.
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Airlines in Japan and South Korea also operate Pratt & Whitney aircraft. Japan Airways and All Nippon Airways have decided to stop operating 32 aircraft combined with that engine, according to Nikkei.
Nikkei reported that the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism also ordered the release of the planes, and the ministry said an engine from the same PW4000 family suffered unspecified problems on a JAL 777 flying to Haneda from Naha on December 4th. stricter inspections in response.
Korean Air said Monday that it has based its 16,777 on Pratt & Whitney engines.
Boeing said it “supports the decision … of the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau” and “the FAA’s action” to suspend 777 operations with Pratt & Whitney engines.
“We are working with these regulators as they take action while these aircraft are on the ground and additional inspections are being conducted by Pratt & Whitney,” Boeing added.
In the Netherlands, an airport spokesman was quoted as saying by Reuters that the photos appeared to show that parts that fell to the ground were parts of an engine blade, but that it was being investigated.
Witnesses said they saw an engine on fire. The plane landed safely at Liege Airport in Belgium, about 19 miles south of Maastricht.
The cargo plane had the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine, a smaller version of one on the United Airlines 777 in Denver, Dutch authorities said.