Originally Posted by
Mark in CA
Boeing recently said it was revamping engine cowlings on the Neo to better contain engine failures. This comes as a result of NTSB recommendations after the fatal accident on Southwest Airlines about a year ago when an engine fan blade broke off in flight, punctured a cabin window and sucked a passenger partially out the window, causing the first US passenger fatality in more than a decade. Does it seem unreasonable to think that such a failure, or worse, could puncture the wing and fuel tank resulting in something like this crash? The NTSB also recommended regular inspections of the fan blades in the CFM engines used on this aircraft type. I wonder if Ukraine Airline is doing these inspections.
Have you got a source for that exact wording, because as far as I know the cowling will never be able to contain an errant blade, only the fan casing will? Moreover,
- the fan appears to me to be too far forward to be able to puncture a wing tank;
- the AD's regarding fan blade attachment on the CFM56 engines have been around for so long that there should be a great deal of awareness around about this issue, to the extent that this shouldn't be an issue anymore;
- the two Southwest aircraft which had uncontained engine failures were 10-15 years old, and the present aircraft is only about 3 years old;
- from a statistical point of view since several years there is a huge amount of B737's with these engines around, logging a tremendous amount of flying hours, yet such a catastrophic engine failure has never happened....