Southwest Flight Blows Engine Right After Take-off.

[Satanica]

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/new...adelphia-International-Airport-480008613.html

A Southwest Airlines flight landed safely in Philadelphia Tuesday after the jet violently depressurized when a piece of an engine flew into and broke a window, according to passenger accounts and the pilot's conversations with air traffic control.

One passenger's father-in-law, relaying information from his daughter, said the impact was so severe that a female passenger was partially sucked out of the plane when the window imploded.

Todd Baur told NBC10 the woman was partially "drawn out" of the plane before being "pulled back in by other passengers."

The pilot, speaking to air traffic control via radio, asked for paramedics to meet the airplane to help injured passengers.
[....]
Asked whether the plane was on fire, she responded: "No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out."

One passenger was rushed to a Philadelphia hospital with critical injuries, Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said. Twelve other passengers were evaluated by medics and seven of those were treated for minor injuries at the scene, he said.

The Dallas-bound Boeing 737-700 — numbered flight 1380 — made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. There were 149 people onboard. A ground stop was put into effect at the airport as crews responded.

The jet's left engine blew shortly after takeoff, passengers said. Pieces of shrapnel flew into the plane's fuselage and at least one window, the passengers and the FAA said.

Passengers shared photos of the plane's left engine with major damage. The engine inlet was shredded with metal bent outward. The pane of a window just behind the left wing was missing.

 

[Craygor]

... female passenger was partially sucked out of the plane when the window imploded.

Unless I'm hitting the head to take a leak that's why I always wear my fucking seat belt.

 

[Alf]

Unless I'm hitting the head to take a leak that's why I always wear my fucking seat belt.

Yup. Seen too much weird shit to do otherwise.

I heard a report on the radio this evening as I was coming back from school that the preliminary indications are the engine failed due to metal fatigue allowing a fracture to propagate, and the injured woman died. She was an executive at Wells Fargo.

--Al

 

[Forensicwx]

Oh. My. God.

Sticking halfway out at 35,000 feet trying desperately not to get sucked all the way....?

That might literally be my worst nightmare.

 

[Sejanus]

Anyone but me think of this...

 

[Satanica]

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/D...rgency-Landing-in-Philadelphia-480012883.html

[....]
The passenger has been identified as a bank executive and mother of two from New Mexico.

News of Jennifer Riordan's death was first shared by the assistant principal of the Albuquerque Catholic school attended by her two children.
[....]
Though it's not immediately clear what caused the engine damage, aerial video from WCAU-TV in Philadelphia showed the engine cowling shredded and ripped away as well as major damage to the engine.

In a press conference Tuesday night, the NTSB announced that one of the fan blades was missing from the engine and that investigators had found metal fatigue where the fanblade attached to the hub. Officials also said that a part of the engine cowling was found about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
[....]
Following the airport news conference, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt confirmed one of the passengers died. The death is the first passenger fatality in a U.S. airline accident since 2009.

Jennifer Riordan was a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank. She was the wife of Michael Riordan, who served until recently as the chief operating officer for the city of Albuquerque.

The New Mexico Broadcasters Association on social media said Riordan was a graduate of the University of New Mexico and former board member.
[....]
Bourman said that everyone started yelling to brace for impact when the plane started to land. Everyone clapped and praised the pilot after he set the aircraft down.

Afterward, Bourman said she saw first responders using a defibrillator to help a woman who had been removed from the plane.
[....]
In August 2016 a titanium fan blade separated from an engine on one of Southwest's Boeing 737-700s and sliced a hole in the fuselage above the left wing. That flight, too, experienced depressurization and made an emergency landing though the damage didn't penetrate the cabin.

Before Tuesday, Southwest had never had an accident-related fatality of a passenger, although a young boy died in 2006 when a Southwest jet skidded off a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport, crashed through a fence and collided with the boy's family's car. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said at a news conference in Dallas that there were no problems with the plane or its engine when it was inspected on Sunday.

The FAA and the NTSB are investigating Tuesday's incident. Boeing said Tuesday they are aware of the incident and are ready to assist in the investigation if needed.
[....]

 

[McDanel]

"...[T]here were no problems with the plane or it's engine when it was inspected on Sunday."

Yes, there was a problem, but no one caught it. Isn't there some way conductivity could be used to test the integrity of metallic components?

 

[Satanica]

http://www.fox4news.com/news/southwest-airlines-sought-more-time-for-engine-inspections

Southwest Airlines sought more time last year to inspect fan blades like the one that snapped off during one of its flights Tuesday in an engine failure that left a passenger dead.

The airline opposed a recommendation by the engine manufacturer to require ultrasonic inspections of certain fan blades within 12 months, saying it needed more time to conduct the work.

Southwest made the comments last year after U.S. regulators proposed making the inspections mandatory. The Federal Aviation Administration has not yet required airlines to conduct the inspections but said late Wednesday that it would do so in the next two weeks.

The manufacturer's recommendation for more inspections followed an engine blowup on a 2016 Southwest flight.

On Tuesday, an engine on another Southwest jet exploded over Pennsylvania, and debris hit the plane. A woman was sucked partway out of the jet when a window shattered. She died later from her injuries.
[....]
Federal investigators are still trying to determine how the window came out of the plane. Riordan, who was in a window seat in Row 14, was wearing a seatbelt.
[....]
The National Transportation Safety Board also blamed metal fatigue for the engine failure on a Southwest plane in Florida in 2016.

That led manufacturer CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France's Safran SA, to recommend last June that airlines conduct the inspections of fan blades on many Boeing 737s.

The FAA proposed making the recommendation mandatory in August but never issued a final decision.

On Wednesday, the FAA said it would issue a directive in the next two weeks to require ultrasonic inspections of fan blades on some CFM56-7B engines after they reach a certain number of takeoffs and landings. Blades that fail inspection would need to be replaced.

It was not immediately clear how many planes would be affected. Last year, the FAA estimated that an order would cover 220 engines on U.S. airlines. That number could be higher now because more engines have hit the number of flights triggering an inspection.

Southwest announced its own program for similar inspections of its 700-plane fleet over the next month. United Airlines said Wednesday it has begun inspecting some of its planes.
[....]
Tuesday's emergency broke a string of eight straight years without a fatal accident involving a U.S. airliner.

"Engine failures like this should not occur," Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the NTSB, said Wednesday.

Sumwalt expressed concern about such a destructive engine failure but said it was too soon to draw any conclusions about the safety of CFM56 engines or the entire fleet of Boeing 737s, the most popular airliner ever built.

It is unknown whether the FAA's original directive would have forced Southwest to quickly inspect the engine that blew up.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said the plane was inspected on Sunday and nothing appeared out of order. A spokeswoman said it was a visual inspection.

The NTSB's Sumwalt said, however, that the kind of wear seen where the missing fan blade broke off would not have been visible just by looking at the engine.

 

[JackBurton]

"...[T]here were no problems with the plane or it's engine when it was inspected on Sunday."

Yes, there was a problem, but no one caught it. Isn't there some way conductivity could be used to test the integrity of metallic components?

NDI inspections likely the only way to find problems like what caused this, and that certainly is not a routine insp do to prior to flight. That is done during more in depth scheduled inspections on the acft, not something that happens everyday or even every week.

http://www.startribune.com/faa-orders-fan-blade-inspections-after-jet-engine-explosion/480209133/

Southwest, and the FAA it appears, did fail miserably though. Eng manufacturer recommended that ultrasound insp be done on these eng and it sounds like everybody dropped the fucking ball.

 

[Sue sue]

Unless I'm hitting the head to take a leak that's why I always wear my fucking seat belt.

Federal investigators are still trying to determine how the window came out of the plane. Riordan, who was in a window seat in Row 14, was wearing a seatbelt.

 

[Craygor]

Federal investigators are still trying to determine how the window came out of the plane. Riordan, who was in a window seat in Row 14, was wearing a seatbelt.

Looking where the window was in relation to the failed engine I wouldn't be surprised that a huge piece of the forward engine cowling smashed into it as it traveled down the side of the aircraft. The only way Riordan would be pulled from her seat (if it was latched properly) would have been if the seat belt failed (broken latch or anchor points) or she was wearing it so fucking loose that was basically draped across her lap, (which I suggest one should not do).

This is a good reason why you should always wear you seatbelt properly. Aloha Flight 243 lost part of its cabin at 24,000 feet. Only 1 fatality, a flight attendant who was standing in the aisle was sucked out. All passeangers survived because they were wearing their belts properly.

 

[McDanel]

@Craygor thanks for reminding me of Aloha Flight 243. I remember when that happened, absolutely incredible.

 

[Satanica]

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/14/us/southwest-flight-accident-engine-ntsb/index.html

The design of an engine fan blade that snapped on a Southwest flight in April, breaking an airplane window and partially sucking a woman out of it, has been a concern since the engine's earliest days, the manufacturer told investigators at a hearing Wednesday.

The hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board and an NTSB report also revealed frightening new details about the chaotic scene aboard Flight 1380, when pilots heard a loud bang, wind roared into the cabin through the broken window and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.
[....]
Investigators have zeroed in on the engine design and its history, which includes various design changes to address cracking and a 2016 engine failure involving another Southwest Airlines plane.

Engine manufacturer CFM International said at the hearing their CFM56-7B model failed its first certification test in the mid-1990s but ultimately passed a second certification test. Since then, engineers have made various design changes to prevent fan blade failures.

After the engines were put into fleet service, "some of those early engines, when we looked at the fan blades, it indicated the coating system was not staying intact as well as we had anticipated with the design change," said Mark Habedank, engineering leader for the CFM56 engine.

The company made a design modification, installing a piece of metal it called a "shim," and adding lubrication.

More recently, inspectors discovered similar cracked blades in the same engine model installed on other airlines' planes, Habedank said.

After the 2016 failure, CFM told operators to perform additional inspections of the fan blades.

Southwest, whose entire fleet is Boeing 737s, said the particular fan blade that failed had not met the requirements for additional scrutiny.

"At the time of the event, we had already inspected 603 engines," said Mark Wibben, an engineering manager at the airline. However, he said, "We had no basis to prioritize these fan blades versus any other blades in our fleet."

The failed engine's last maintenance work was performed in June 2017, the NTSB reported. It was manufactured in 1997 and overhauled in 2012.

CFM International is a joint venture between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines.

In a statement sent Wednesday to CNN, GE Aviation said that CFM "responded aggressively" after the 2016 incident and worked closely with regulators to inspect some 350,000 fan blades in the CFM56-7B fleet. All the fan blades were cleared by mid-August 2018, the statement said.
[....]

 

[Satanica]

The Federal Aviation Administration is reassigning three managers in a regional office that oversees regulation of Southwest Airlines, which has been the subject of several safety investigations, according to a person familiar with the situation.
[....]
The Wall Street Journal reported that the reassignments were partly due to allegations that managers retaliated against safety inspectors who raised concerns about oversight of Southwest. The newspaper said the Transportation Department's inspector-general has spent months examining safety issues at Southwest, including lax documentation of maintenance on more than 100 planes.
[....]
Last year, after a catastrophic engine failure led to a passenger's death on a Southwest flight, the Transportation Department inspector general's office said it would review FAA oversight of the airline. The government office said it was concerned whether FAA was closely examining Southwest's ability to identify hazards and reduce risk.

Earlier this year, the FAA told Southwest to use technology to improve calculation of the weight of bags and how they are loaded on planes after finding frequent mistakes. Experts say faulty calculations can become critical during emergencies such as engine failures.

FAA Removes 3 Managers in Office That Monitors Southwest

The Federal Aviation Administration is reassigning three managers in a regional office that oversees regulation of Southwest Airlines, which has been the subject of several safety investigations, according to a person familiar with the situation.

www.nbcdfw.com

 

[McDanel]

When I worked in QC for life rafts, I was not particularly loved by production.