There were two episodes for fan failure on the RB211-22B. The early episode was failure of the titanium fan disk. I met the first Eastern Air Lines aircraft that returned after losing the Nbr 3 LP fan. Fortunately the major pieces went away from the fuselage but one fan blade had penetrated the leading edge slats and was lodged in a passenger window. It penetrated the outer pane and was just touching the inner pane. They set a very low cycle life limit on the fan disk there being different lives for disks made from the upper or lower halves of the billet. TWA also experienced one of these failures.
The later failure were as described above involving the LP Location bearing. That one was an EAL Nbr 2 engine . I viewed that aircraft at JFK the next day and it was only fate that allowed the aircraft survive for three hydraulic systems were severed and the fourth had the line damaged but not punctured. With the flying stabilizer the A/C would be uncontrollable if all four systems had failed. Fortunately all later versions of the RB-211 had improved the LP bearing.
Last edited by tonytales; 18th Oct 2017 at 03:10.
Reason: Removed some text