Originally Posted by
tdracer
A sense of perspective is sorely lacking in most of these comments. Metal out the tailpipe is obviously not good, but it happens - more often than you might think (you usually don't hear about it because the bits don't land on anybody) - it's still considered to be a relatively benign shutdown (uncontained high energy metal coming out the side is a different story).
There are roughly 400 Trent powered 787s currently in commercial operation - that pencils out to somewhere around a quarter million Trent 1000 operating hours per month. If they're averaging one or two shutdowns/month, that's still a pretty respectable shutdown rate (certainly good enough for 180 ETOPS). If it's more like 4 or 5/month - then it's a serious problem on an ETOPS aircraft. I no longer have access to the Trent shutdown rate information - but I seriously doubt anyone else here does either. What I do know is that the regulators and operators have all that information and are keep close track to determine what, if any, further steps are required to insure fleet safety.
There is a tendency on this form to treat every engine failure as the end of the world (especially the unusual ones). It's not - engines fail. It's an inescapable fact just like death and taxes. It's the rate and severity of the failures that you need to pay attention to.
Or the possibility of two of them having benign shutdown at the same time.
If a program that puts all 787 aircraft on the ground in order to modify away an engine problem, and that problem continues, that is a cause for concern.
Time will tell.