AIrbubba - thanks. That's the incident I was describing. The other incident I remembered was 1990. NW 727 enroute from MIA to MSP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northw...lines_Flight_5
Northwest Airlines Flight 5 was a flight from
Miami International Airport to
Minneapolis−Saint Paul International Airport, which, on January 4, 1990, suffered the loss of the
number three (starboard) engine at 35,000 feet (11,000 m) in mid-flight over
Madison, Florida.
[2]
The
Boeing 727-251, operated by
Northwest Airlines, took off from Miami at 08:15
EST on the morning of January 4, 1990. About an hour later, at approximately 09:10 EST, the pilots reported hearing a loud bang towards the rear of the aircraft.
[2] The 14-year-old jet continued to fly normally and the crew, not knowing that an engine had fallen off,
[3] flew for almost 50 minutes before carrying out a safe
emergency landing at
Tampa International Airport at 09:58 EST.
[4] The engine, a
Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15, was found a day later in a field near
Madison, Florida.
[4]
After landing, inspection crews found the forward
lavatory external seal was missing and had probably been improperly installed, causing a leakage when the plane was pressurized. The missing seal caused frozen chunks of lavatory fluid to be ingested by the number three engine thus damaging the compressor blades.
[5] Upon failure the engine separated from the aircraft
fuselage, as it had been designed to do.
[2]
The
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the probable cause of the incident to be "the failure of company service personnel to properly service the airplane forward lavatory."
[5]