Reckon that some hefty lump of the ejected cowl, or anti/de ice bleed air components will have more a part to play than a blade.

Sad loss of life!
But job well done for the SouthWest Crew.
It looks like the flaps and slats worked and that is a bonus in a single engine landing.

This is indeed a complex situation with a lot of pressure on the Flight Crew to get on the ground ASAP.

On the history of the engine: The worlds most sold turbo fan engine bare none.
10 000 737 sold likely 30 000 plus engines !

I love my CFM56-7, if it starts it runs! Always!
BUT!
Tdracer:
As you say those cowlings are supposed to contain any fan blade failure, that is the secondary job( aerodynamics being main purpose?) .
And any compressor or turbine blade SHALL be contained and or spit out rearwards to be certified! Am I right so fare?
The AF A380 the other day had a similar event.

Anyway, do we know of any other CFM 56 incidents say the last 30 years of cowl separation due to fan blade separation or the likes.

Looking forward to more info on this one.

Want to correct what I said above, I was comparing the wrong pictures, the failure effect does indeed look similar.

Any idea what was concluded on the previous incident? How did CFM address the uncountained failure? FBO should always be contained, turbine blade is considered infinite energy and uncontainable, another matter all together.

Incorrect, a turbine blade release is considered as having infinite energy and is not contained - see Qantas QF32 A380 as an example. For cert compliance you have to show that no catastrophic event can occur as a result of a turbine blade release. For instance, if an APU turbine blade releases then it has to be demonstrated that the trajectory of the release does not compromise primary structure or flight controls, ie the release is satisfactorily mitigated by design.

Also it's not the cowl that contains the fan blade in the event of a FBO, it is the engine case.

You might want to review your source(s).

If the 787 used the same engine as the 737, it would have four of them. :ugh:

....and we'd call it an A340-200/300..........

Blades are supposed to be contained.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_off_testing

You are talking about turbine discs and fan discs, the central parts of metal holding all the blades.
But I guess you know that as you refer to a turbine disc failure (QF32).

Its appears the unfortuate pax may have been wedged in / partially out of the window at some point.

Looks a mess aft of the window in question
https://t.co/B1dFLZlaEq

Yes, indeed.

Quantas was not suppose to happen Stumpy, You know that!
DC10 in Iowa was also a reminder of things unlikely!!
Anyway you know perfectly well what i mean!

Infinite energy, and explosions? Now what is that all about!!!

...... Q A N T A S .............

Well, some pax have read too many tabloid papers and tabloid TV! I doubt there was time to explain that it was a bad failure and they were getting to a low altitude and would park up just as soon as possible.

When there is a helluva bang and the rubber jungle with emergency descent? Very few on board would be able to follow the sequence and feel comfortable. As we all know, flying is very safe. Whilst uncontained failures are rare, I think it's even more so to actually kill a pax with it.

If I had been onboard, I would have expected folks to be panicked and presuming they might die. I know that Ms PAXboy (not married!) would have been terrified and I would have had to do a lot of comforting during and after the fact. I think we need to be generous.

LOL

"considered to have" infinite energy and I retracted the explosion hypothesis, do keep up.

I apologise to BluSdUp if English is not your first language.

Southwest Airlines flight 3472, 2016. Same engine, same type, same airline, and very similar event (IF this one is a blade off) including fuselage damage and depressurisation (occurred around the same altitude as well).

As far as I can find there are no other similar CFM 56 incidents, but I haven't done a lot of research to be sure on that. However, if these are the only two then question is are Southwest really unlucky or doing something different. As you say, there are a lot of CFM 56s out there.

Agree. And while aviation analysts rushed to provide answers for news media, one of the news outlets just posted images of the SWA 2016 engine along side a pic of today's event. Be damned if they don't look very similar.

Was the last US fatal uncontained engine failure DL1288 (Pensacola, 1996)? I don't recall any others recently.

Assuming we're all talking about the same previous incident (SWA 3472 / N766SW) the NTSB investigation page is here: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...agoula-fl.aspx

- no final report yet (that I can see), only an interim update
- appears they may have stopped after deciding cause of fan blade failure (and remedy?)
- sounds like they believe blade exited backwards not tangential, and wasn't responsible for the fuselage damage (therefore arguably making it a contained failure)
- there is no mention in the interim update of any further work on investigating the cowling failure or what hit the fuselage, it doesn't sound like they were interested...

This comment was lost in the shuffle for a bit.
Actually, the fundamental fuselage structure of the 737 is largely unchanged from the airplane's original design - with the first flight of the prototype in April, 1967.

design of engines
 

Grateful if someone can clarify for me ( SLF) if engines are supposed to , or not supposed to, contain blade separation ? I always thought that engines had "kevlar" type of protection to contain blade separation and that was a certification requirement. But some posts here seem to suggest otherwise. Grateful for any clarification.

The 380 out of Singapore (Qantas) experienced a departed IPT. It was number two. And was an extremely serious event. No fatalities. RR Trent, supposedly there was an “oil fire”, in the stator cave which caused an over speed of the turbine, which turned its rotor into liquid metal bearing. It’s in here somewheres.

Partial sever of the forward wing spar, and uncontrolled throttle on number one, plus a serious fuel leak made the emergency landing quite an accomplishment.

That one? Certainly not a fan issue, a very high energy turbine.