Huge chunks of plane: What it looked like when a Pratt & Whitney jet engine exploded Katie Dowd FacebookTwitterEmail On Saturday, Feb. 20, residents of a Broomfield, Colo., neighborhood saw large chunks of a plane falling from the sky. Huge portions of the right engine, pieces of fiberglass and flakes of insulation rained down, just missing a home. United Airlines Flight 328 on its was to Hawaii when its engine experienced a failure. The plane was able to land safely and no injuries were reported. The engine on the Boeing 777-200 jet was a PW4000-112, made by Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney. The company is now at the center of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Federal aviation regulators ordered United Airlines to step up inspections of all Boeing 777s equipped with that type of engine. United said it is temporarily removing those 24 aircraft from service.