The National Transportation Safety Board on Monday said a group of maintenance records will be formed to investigate the history of the Boeing 777 engine after it failed on United Airlines flight # 328 and burst into flames shortly after takeoff on Saturday.
“Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, so that we can prevent it from happening again,” NTSB President Robert Sumwalt said at an evening press conference on Monday.
Sumwalt emphasized that the investigation is still in its preliminary stages. Asked whether the particular engine was inspected after another engine failure on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2018, Sumwalt said this is a question that will be answered pending an investigation by the maintenance group.
Boeing recommended that airlines land all 777s with the type of engine that exploded after taking off from Denver last weekend, and most operators that operate these planes said they would temporarily remove them from service.
The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States ordered United Airlines to intensify inspections of the aircraft after one of its flights made an emergency landing at Denver International Airport on Saturday, when pieces of the engine body rained in suburban neighborhoods. None of the 231 passengers or 10 crew members were injured and the flight landed safely, officials said. United is among the operators that landed the planes.
FAA administrator Steve Dickson identified the focus on intensified inspections as hollow fan blades exclusive to the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine model and used exclusively on the Boeing 777s. Dickson’s statement said the conclusion was based on an initial review of safety data and would likely mean landing some planes.
United Airlines flight 328 being inspected.
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Boeing said there were 69 of the 777s with the Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines in service and another 59 in storage. The company said they should be stopped until the FAA installs an inspection regime.
Emergency landing is the most recent problem for Boeing, which saw its 737 Max planes stopped for more than a year after two fatal accidents in 2019 and is suffering amid the huge reduction in air travel due to the coronavirus pandemic. Max planes began returning to the skies last year.
COLORADO MAN DESCRIBES ‘CLOSE CALL’ AS A HUGE PART OF FLIGHT 328 JUST MISSES HOUSE
The video posted on Twitter of Saturday’s emergency showed the engine totally engulfed in flames as the plane flew. The freeze of frames from different videos made by a passenger sitting a little in front of the engine and also posted on Twitter seemed to show a broken fan blade on the engine.
Passengers, who were heading to Honolulu, said they feared the plane would crash after an explosion and a flash of light, while people on the ground saw huge pieces of the aircraft fall, failing to hit a house and crushing a truck. The explosion, visible from the ground, left a trail of black smoke in the sky.
The NTSB said that two of the engine fan blades were fractured and the rest of the blades “exhibited damage”. But he warned that it is too early to draw conclusions about what happened.
United says it will work closely with the FAA and the NTSB “to determine any additional steps necessary to ensure that these aircraft meet our strict safety standards and are able to return to service”.
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The NTSB reported that the cabin’s voice recorder and flight data recorder were transported to its Washington laboratory so that the data could be analyzed. NTSB investigations can take up to a year or more, although in important cases the agency usually releases some investigative material in the middle of the process.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.