Newsflash: aircraft manufacturers don’t make the engines that power their aircraft.
While Boing can be blamed for a whole bunch of issues, especially the 777 Max, they can’t be blamed for another manufacturers engine failure.
Anyway, this is beside the point, what really happened was a gremlin on the wing trashed the engine!
I bet it sounds cool, though.
And the maintenance, maintenance training and scheduling of maintenance is set by the airline using guidelines from the manufacturers and the FAA.
It’s a little alarming how quickly after takeoff the incident happened. I’m going to wager that the root cause will be maintenance neglect or maintenance oversight. If it was a FOD event I’d think the engine wouldnt run up on the ground.
It’s also worth noting that these events are exceptionally rare, and when they do happen they are often survivable. Thanks, good engineering!
It’s a shame they have to give the piece back to the feds for an investigation. Moved over onto the actual lawn, it would make a nice contemporary art piece.
So they have no responsibility to ensure that they are in good working order?
See above.
That’s the responsibility of the airline operating the aircraft, engines get replaced during the operational life of an aircraft, so not the responsibility of the original manufacturers of the plane.
They provide ongoing maintenance services for the planes they sell, so it seems like having some familiarity with the engines in use would be part of that, given how it’s their name on the overall product. Presumably, they have a working relationship with the company/companies that provide engines and their techs would have some familiarity with the engines themselves, even if they do not work on them.
The engine manufacturers and aircraft manufacturers create the training requirements, maintenance requirements and certification. It is the airlines responsibility to implement the maintenance per manufacturer instructions. The FAA oversees to ensure airlines have a maintenance management program and that all maintenance is performed per manufacturer guidelines.
There is frequent feedback between airlines and manufacturers. Manufacturers issue service bulletins and provide root cause feedback to airlines. Airlines in turn will let manufacturers know if processes could be improved and request deviations to instructions if necessary. The component-level feed back is direct, that is the engine shop at United would be talking directly to P&W or GE without necessarily going through Boeing, so as to ensure accuracy of information and speed of communication.
If an airline chooses to try to cut corners that will come out (quickly) in the NTSB investigation. But it is the airlines responsibility to ensure maintenance is performed to standard.
My rule of thumb is Never get on an aeroplane. 'Tis a silly way to travel.
Couple of months ago an An-124 cargo plane had a violent engine failure during the take-off. The engine shrapnel flew though the whole fuselage. The crew was able land it but the plane did lose nearly all electric systems including radio communications and the control for the wheel brakes. It did overshoot the runway and the front landing gear collapsed. No personnel damages but the plane is likely a hull loss.
Antonov An-124 is purely a cargo plane design so there isn’t a passenger plane version out of these.
very graphic example of my paranoia.
I’m not too thrilled about the propeller plane of those small turbo prop airliners either - but a couple of propeller blades is a much lower probability than rows of compressor blades of hardened titanium.
Grounded apparently though United’s are th only US carrier with those engines. I guess the FAA is looking for its rep back.
A soupçon of add’l info here… I think:
I had read somewhere that there have been people seen flinging coins into the engine for ‘luck’.
Alright, it was on the Internet so may not be true, unlike a Murdock publication where it certainly would not be true.
Mr Lu argued in court that the airline should have warned passengers not to throw coins at planes.
Thank you
More trouble from Raytheon
I mean who could ever imagine Raytheon would be problematic…
Pratt and Whitney is a subsidiary of the military giant conglomerate Raytheon. In both of these cases it’s not Boeing but rather Pratt and Whitney that are the problem.
At this point, do we really know what the root cause is? Could be an engine design issue, could be a maintenance issue, could be an FAA oversight issue, might be all of the above, might be other factors as well. I think probably best to let the NTSB do their thing and see where the investigation leads.
