SWA1380 - diversion to KPHL after engine event

[DaveReidUK]

Injured pax was reportedly seated in 14A which, as already noted, is just forward of the wing trailing edge.

That, and the indications that whatever penetrated the cabin was travelling at an angle and not tangentially, would suggest that it wasn't a liberated fan or turbine blade.

[CONSO]

Originally Posted by andrasz

Looking at the pic (SWA1380 - diversion to KPHL after engine event) of the window it appears that the piece of shrapnel did not penetrate the outer pane but came in at an angle, puncturing the skin adhacent to the window frame and then shattering the inner pane.

FWIW-despite the claim of passenger almost sucked out- the photo seems to show the outer pane mostly/all intact. And a close look at the bottom of what remains of the inner pane ( actually about 1/8 thick plastic seems to shows the typical center small dia hole (one of several) used to equallize the pressure slowly between the inner and out pane.

It therefore seems probable that the injury to the passenger MAY have been due to a plastic ' shard '. What seems puzzling is that would require an immediate high pressure between the inner and outer pane ??? or possibly the penetration of the fuselage by a part from the engine or related structure near the top of the window ( as stated above) . Will be interesting to see photos of the outside of the plane

In either case - the bit about being sucked out may NOT be supported- but a great figment of someones imagination which nowdays serves as news

[mkenig]

At about 5:00 minutes. NYCtr with 1380 until freq change. http://archive-server.liveatc.net/km...2018-1500Z.mp3

Then KPHL twr about 18:30 in the mp3: http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kp...2018-1500Z.mp3

Pilots sound understandably drained.

[underfire]

makes it look like entire window inner/outer are missing
"She wasn't like sucked out of the window or pulled out. But her like arms and her body were sucked, like sucked in that direction, from my vantage point. So you see people, from the back of the seat, holding onto her, you know, trying to keep her contained," Martinez told CNN.

Meanwhile, other passengers were trying to patch the hole in the plane.

"People in the other rows are — just trying to plug the hole, which sounds ridiculous, because you know people are using jackets and things, and it's just being sucked right out," she told CNN.

on a side note, did anyone notice that none of the pax were wearing the Ox mask correctly?

[edmundronald]

Engine Cowling loss becoming a habitual event?

Pix prove this is not SLF's overworked imagination ...
If this occurs too frequently, sooner or later an engine will ingest some bits and pieces of cowling orthe fasteners and then it will be a case of uncontained engine failure.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/17/u...ing/index.html

Edmund

UPDATE: One fatality. Maybe this wasn't altogether a "minor" incident.
https://nypost.com/2018/04/17/southw...ine-explosion/

[CONSO]

JUST IN- ONE PERSON DIED ...

news/cnn-national/live-ntsb-holds-press-conference-on-southwest-airlines-flight/730881781

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/sou...ght-emergency/

[tdracer]

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...

[Feathered]

Originally Posted by India Four Two

From the CNN link above:



My bold. Is this the best CNN can do in terms of an “aviation analyst”?

You must be new to CNN. Sadly, whenever there is an aviation topic that we know something about, the amount of B.S. reporting is quite high. Soon we will hear from all sorts of "experts" that speculate about what they don't know about. Actually, substitute aviation topic for any topic, and it is about the same. For all of the newsworthy events that we don't know anything about, we can only assume it is no more accurate.

On the other hand, I highly recommend reading (United Airlines) Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, by Laurence Gonzales et al for in-depth reporting on a fan blade failure, what caused the failure, why it was not predicted or detected in advance (the underlying fault had existed in that blade for almost 2 decades before the catastrophe), and the effects that it had on people. While many of us know the details of that DC-10 flight in 1989 over Iowa and its heroic crew, this newer book goes much deeper into how one piece of titanium alloy changed so much.

[caevans]

Gotta put the Facebooker who took a video of himself with the O2 mask over his mouth up for a Darwin Award! Nice job!

[t1grm]

What a scary incident but, tragic as one death is, this seems to impress on me the resilience of modern aircraft. Surely a similar failure in the 70's/80's would have bought the aircraft down?

[Turbine D]

VinRouge,

a single HP turbine blade has the same Kinetic energy as a 20mm round if it separates at the root. Takes a lot of containment to keep it all in, plus to keep a massively unbalanced core from shaking itself to bits, even if the FADEC catches it and commands an auto shutdown.

Did you mean fan blade? HP turbine blades are just ahead of the LP turbine near the rear of the engine which looks rather intact and generally don't move forward when they fail as they are ground up by the LPT...

[vapilot2004]

The damaged cowl suggests a blade out event, but we just don't know for sure.

Not so long ago considered a rare event, uncontained engine failures seem to be happening with more regularity. The technology is mature, so maintenance inspection procedures and manufacturing QC would appear to be the first places to start looking for problems.

[completely deck]

Originally Posted by caevans

Gotta put the Facebooker who took a video of himself with the O2 mask over his mouth up for a Darwin Award! Nice job!

Nice job making fun of people going through an emergency from the comfort of your arm chair! It really helps in situations like this when people like you are hypercritical of normal people going through incidents.

[lomapaseo]

The FAA funded a study of actual in-service events in the 90's to statistically evaluate the forward and aft trajectories of uncontained rotor engine parts. The greatest spread was seen to be fan blade particles with the outer panels often going forward into the soft inlet cowling and the innermost panels of blades going aftward if they did manage to escape through the engine casing.

However, it's not clear at this time whether the reported aircraft damage was caused by engine blade particles or release of aircraft cowling particles.

In this latest incident the degree of visible damage to the engine core cowls seem to be much greater than the earlier event pictured earlier in this thread.

[garp]

Originally Posted by completely deck

Nice job making fun of people going through an emergency from the comfort of your arm chair! It really helps in situations like this when people like you are hypercritical of normal people going through incidents.

If he finds the time to film himself he should also be able to put the mask on correctly. The FA showed how to do it just a few minutes earlier.

[garp]

Originally Posted by mkenig

At about 5:00 minutes. NYCtr with 1380 until freq change. http://archive-server.liveatc.net/km...2018-1500Z.mp3

Then KPHL twr about 18:30 in the mp3: http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kp...2018-1500Z.mp3

Pilots sound understandably drained.

No mayday call or did I miss that?

[thcrozier]

Who is the engine manufacturer? GE?

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by vapilot2004

Not so long ago considered a rare event, uncontained engine failures seem to be happening with more regularity. The technology is mature, so maintenance inspection procedures and manufacturing QC would appear to be the first places to start looking for problems.

I'm not sure they are happening at a higher rate - there are other items in play. The number of aircraft and their utilization are both up dramatically over the last 10 years, and with the internet and 24 hour news cycle we hear about the incidents right away. For example, a relatively young Trent 800 on a 777 had a fan blade release back around year 2000 - did you know about it? I do but that's because I was working the 777 at the time...
What I am concerned about is the way the fan cowls are coming apart after a fan blade release - that's not supposed to happen (and is taken into account during the design process). That didn't used to happen, and I'm at a loss as to what may have changed.

[hoss183]

Originally Posted by BrooksPA-28

In the photo posted by Jet Jockey A4 the outer window shows no apparent damage. I know there is a hole in passenger windows to equalize pressure. Is it possible the window may have blown, not from "shrapnel" but as a result of the rapid decompression?

What are you smoking, the outer pane (and all inner) are totally gone.

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by thcrozier

Who is the engine manufacturer? GE?

CFM is a joint venture between GE and Safran (used to be Snecma) (French).
IIRC, Safran is responsible for the fan on the CFM56-7.