The engine of the Pratt & Whitney plane that caught fire and forced a United Airlines pilot to make an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Denver had similar bursts on at least two other flights, experts said on Monday.
Three years ago, a fan blade broke on one of the PW4000 engines that powered another United Airlines Boeing 777-200 plane, this time during a flight over the Pacific Ocean on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu.
And in December, two blades of the same type of engine broke on a Japan Airlines Boeing 777-200 that was flying from Naha to Tokyo.
As in Denver, the pilots on these two flights managed to land their planes safely and no one was injured.
“This is not the first time this has happened,” said aviation expert Greg Feith on NBC’s “Today” program, referring to the PW4000 engine malfunction.
But after Saturday’s fire episode in Colorado skies, whose images went viral on social media, Boeing landed all of its oldest 777-200 aircraft models worldwide, while federal investigators inspect the aircraft’s PW4000 engines , which are used only by United Airlines in the U.S. and by airlines in Japan and South Korea.
In particular, Federal Aviation Administration administrator Steve Dickson said inspections are being “stepped up for hollow fan blades that are exclusive to this engine model, used exclusively on Boeing 777 aircraft”.
Former President of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jim Hall, said the defective blades are only in the “first generation” of PW4000 engines.
“I suspect that the reason all the planes are being removed is because they (the FAA and Pratt & Whitney) have no inspection process in place and are embarrassed,” Hall told NBC News. “For the past decade, the FAA has responded to the economic interests of the aviation industry, which takes precedence over security.”
Pratt & Whitney, which is owned by Raytheon, insisted that it was cooperating with federal investigators.
“United Airlines flight 328 is currently under investigation by the NTSB and Pratt & Whitney has sent a team to work with the investigators,” the company said in a statement. Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines that power Boeing 777 ”aircraft.
But an NTSB investigation into the malfunction of a Pratt & Whitney engine on February 13, 2018 on United’s flight to Honolulu blamed the company for not carrying out stricter inspections.
“The lack of training caused the inspector to make an incorrect assessment of an indication that resulted in a blade with a crack being returned to the service where it ended up fractured,” says the report.
Boeing said it was also cooperating with the feds. “We believe that every investigation is an opportunity to learn how the industry can continue to make air travel safer for everyone,” the company said in a statement.
Feith said there are safeguards built into the Boeing 777-200s to prevent them from colliding after this type of engine failure.
“The FAA requires the manufacturer of a twin-engine plane like this to certify it so that it can fly with an engine, which has been done,” said Feith.
Still, the fact that the flames took so long to extinguish raises new concerns about the safety of the PW4000 engine, he said.
“If this aircraft was on the ocean for an hour or two, the biggest concern is that there is a fire suppression system in the engine and the fire continues to burn,” he said.
United flight 328, bound for Honolulu with 231 people on board, reported problems on Saturday, just after taking off from Denver.
A passenger video showed one of the plane’s engines on fire and falling apart before the wreckage started to rain in the Denver suburbs as the pilot reported “mayday” to the control tower and started to spin the jet.
A similar scenario took place on Saturday in a different Boeing jet in the Netherlands. A Boeing 747-400 cargo plane, powered by a smaller version of the PW4000 engines, began to scrap engine parts shortly after taking off from Maastricht airport on Saturday.
No one was injured and Dutch authorities are investigating the incident.
