Originally Posted by
brika
Coincidence that it is Southwest again (August 2016)? How old is the aircraft? Maintenance issues?? Quality issues???
The age of the aircraft is immaterial - what matters is the engine (which is unlikely to be the same one as delivered on the aircraft).
The previous (similar) Southwest Event was attributed to metal fatigue of the fan blade root. Supposedly they implemented new inspection requirements of the fan blades after that.
Assuming this is another fan blade release (and it rather looks like it), I'm sure the attention will be on the heritage of this fan blade - what commonality is there with the previous event blade (e.g. made at about the same time) and at how the fan blade inspections are being performed.
Oh, and before people get too overly excited about two similar events - while it is certainly worrisome that both events occurred to the same operator, the CFM56-7 has accumulated roughly 50 million flight hours since the August 2016 event. One fan blade failure every 50 million hours isn't good, but it's not horrible either...