Feb 23, 2021
The midair disintegration of a jet engine over suburban Denver Saturday is the latest in a string of failures that has raised alarm among regulators about debris evading shielding that’s supposed to keep broken parts from hitting aircraft.
The incident aboard United Airlines flight 328, which showered neighborhoods with metal debris, appears to have been the fifth in five years in which a fan blade broke and destroyed the front section of the engine, according to accident reports and safety experts. That portion of the engine isn’t as protected as the core areas around the jet turbines that are built to contain material in a failure.
Damage to a fan blade on an engine that failed on a United Airlines Boeing 777 flight is consistent with metal fatigue, based on a preliminary assessment, the chairman of the U.S. air accident investigator said on Monday.
Boeing 777 grounding explained visually: Pratt and Whitney engine failure involved in two incidents on same day yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The jet engine fan blade that broke loose on a United Airlines flight Saturday near Denver, triggering a massive failure leading to the grounding of dozens of Boeing Co. 777s, resulted from metal fatigue, according to National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt.
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Damage To United Boeing 777 Engine Consistent With Metal Fatigue: NTSB
The engine that failed on the 26-year-old Boeing Co 777 and shed parts over a Denver suburb was a PW4000 used on 128 planes, or less than 10% of the global fleet of more than 1,600 delivered 777 widebody jets.
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Damage to a fan blade on an engine that failed on a United Airlines Boeing 777 flight is consistent with metal fatigue, based on a preliminary assessment, the chairman of the U.S. air accident investigator said on Monday.
The Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine failed on Saturday with a loud bang four minutes after takeoff from Denver, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Robert Sumwalt told reporters following an initial analysis of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.