Federal aviation regulators are ordering United Airlines to intensify inspections of all Boeing 777s equipped with the type of engine they suffered a catastrophic failure about Denver on Saturday. United said it is temporarily withdrawing these aircraft from service.
The ads it came a day after United Airlines flight 328 had to make an emergency landing at Denver International Airport after its right engine exploded shortly after takeoff. Pieces of the engine housing, a Pratt & Whitney PW4000, rained in suburban neighborhoods.
Separately, Dutch authorities were investigating a very similar incident, in which a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane dropped engine parts just after taking off from Maastricht airport on Saturday, according to Reuters. An airport spokesman said small pieces of metal were scattered across the southern city of Meerssen. There was some damage and a woman was injured. It landed safely.
The plane in the United States, with 231 passengers and 10 crew members on board, also landed safely. No one on board or on the ground was injured, officials 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 increased for hollow fan blades that are exclusive to this engine model, used exclusively on the Boeing 777 aircraft. “
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The National Transportation Safety Board said in a separate statement that two of the engine fan blades were broken and the rest of the blades “exhibited damage”. The NTSB has warned that it is too early to draw conclusions about how the incident happened.
Boeing said it is recommending that “operations of the 69 777 in service and 59 in storage” with Pratt & Whitney engines worldwide be suspended “until the FAA identifies the appropriate inspection protocol.”
Pratt & Whitney issued a statement saying it “has sent a team to work with the investigators” and is “actively coordinating with operators and regulators to support the revised inspection interval” of the engines involved.
The video posted on Twitter showed the engine totally engulfed in flames as the plane flew through the air. Frozen pictures of different videos taken by a passenger sitting a little in front of the engine and posted on Twitter seemed to show a broken fan in the engine.
United is the only US airline with the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 in its fleet, the FAA said. United said it currently has 24 of the 777 in service.
United said 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”.
The NTSB reported that the cabin’s voice recorder and flight data recorder were transported to its laboratory in Washington so the data could be downloaded and 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.
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Airlines in Japan and South Korea also operate planes powered by Pratt & Whitney. Japan Airways and All Nippon Airways decided to stop operating 32 planes combined with this engine, according to Nikkei.
Nikkei reported that Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism also ordered the planes to stop running, and the ministry said that an engine of the same PW4000 family suffered unspecified problems in a JAL 777 flying to Haneda from Naha on 4 from December. stricter inspections in response.
Korean Air said on Monday it had landed its 16 777s with Pratt & Whitney engines.
Boeing said it “supports the decision … of the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau” and “the FAA’s action” to suspend the operations of the 777s that have Pratt & Whitney engines.
“We are working with these regulators while they act while the planes are on the ground and other inspections are being conducted by Pratt & Whitney,” added Boeing.
In the Netherlands, the airport spokesman was quoted by Reuters as saying that the photos appeared to show that the parts that fell to the ground were parts of an engine shovel, but that was being investigated.
Witnesses said they saw an engine on fire. The plane safely landed at Belgium’s Liege airport, about 19 miles south of Maastricht.
The cargo plane had a Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine, a smaller version of the United Airlines 777 engine in Denver, Dutch officials said.