In its investigation of an uncontained engine failure that
occurred on a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas, Texas
(Love Field), to Little Rock, Arkansas, on November 17, the
National Transportation Safety Board is searching for engine
components that fell to the ground in a sparsely populated
rural area of Texas.
The incident, in which pieces of the fan blades and the
spinner separated from the #2 (right) engine, occurred at
2:54 pm over Hunt County, Texas, at an altitude of 25,000
feet during the climb phase of flight. None of the 133
passengers or 5 crewmembers on board the B-737-300 (N676SW)
aircraft were injured. The crew shut down the damaged
engine and returned safely to Dallas on power from the #1
(left) engine. In addition to the damage to the engine and
its housing components, the aircraft sustained minor damage
to the fuselage.
RFields5421 From United States of America, joined Jul 2007, 6150 posts, RR: 25 Reply 1, posted (5 years 5 months 1 week 10 hours ago) and read 2459 times:
Oops - time to check my back yard !!!
Hate to hit one of those things with the lawn mower.
Tdscanuck From Canada, joined Jan 2006, 12709 posts, RR: 80 Reply 4, posted (5 years 5 months 1 week 5 hours ago) and read 2154 times:
Quoting AirTranTUS (Reply 3): Quoting KELPkid (Reply 2):
Remember the debate we had on whether or not the engine failure was an uncontained failure?
Really?! Pieces left the engine, which the FAA commonly refers to as an uncontained failure.
The debate was on whether the engine containment failed. It didn't, because there is no requirement to prevent bits of the engine going out through the inlet (although the NTSB is now considering it).
It was an uncontained failure in the sense that bits escaped the engine. It was not a failure of the engine containment system.
474218 From United States of America, joined Oct 2005, 6340 posts, RR: 9 Reply 5, posted (5 years 5 months 1 week 5 hours ago) and read 2094 times:
Quoting Tdscanuck (Reply 4): It was an uncontained failure in the sense that bits escaped the engine. It was not a failure of the engine containment system.
Quoting N471WN (Thread starter): In addition to the damage to the engine and
its housing components, the aircraft sustained minor damage
to the fuselage.
Damage to the engine, housing components and the fuselage. Sure sounds like an uncontained failure. Parts exiting out the tail pipe (contained failure) should not damage the fuselage or the housing component, nacell?
OPNLguy From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 6, posted (5 years 5 months 6 days 16 hours ago) and read 1885 times:
It's goint to be interesting to watch how they go about looking for the items. Given the size differences beween the CFM56 and the CF6 (that powered UAL282), it would seem that they'll be looking for fewer pieces and smaller ones at that.
Back in the 1980s, AAL had a 727-200 enroute DFW-SAN that shucked the #3 engine right off the aircraft (lav ice ingestion), and the engine ended up impacting somewhere in eastern New Mexico. If memory serves, it took them a couple of days to find it, and they ended up doing so at night. After a full day soaking up the sun, they went out with IR equipment, and the engine (still warm from the day's sun/heat) stood out againstthe cooler terrain.
I don't know that they'll be able to do that in this latest case (smaller pieces versus a whole engine in AAL's case), but it'll be interesting to watch how they do it.
RFields5421 From United States of America, joined Jul 2007, 6150 posts, RR: 25 Reply 7, posted (5 years 5 months 6 days 16 hours ago) and read 1843 times:
It will be largely luck to find the pieces.
Hunt County is roughly 29 miles square - 840 square miles of territory. It's 2000 census population was less than 80,000 people - about 40% in the county seat of Greenville.
The county includes a couple very large lakes and miles and miles of river bottom land which would be impossible to search for anything relatively small.
Much of the 'improved' land in the county is used to hay and some farming.
The good thing is that early November had almost no rainfall - so the ground would not have been super soft when the items hit. The bad thing is that a few days after - most of the county got 1.5 to 2 inches of rain which could have covered anything up with mud, or moved relatively small parts into creeks and stock tanks.
Tdscanuck From Canada, joined Jan 2006, 12709 posts, RR: 80 Reply 8, posted (5 years 5 months 6 days 3 hours ago) and read 1648 times:
Quoting 474218 (Reply 5):
Damage to the engine, housing components and the fuselage. Sure sounds like an uncontained failure. Parts exiting out the tail pipe (contained failure) should not damage the fuselage or the housing component, nacell?
Damage to the engine and nacelle is absolutely expected in a blade-out. The requirement is to contain the bits from the plane of the fan +/- 15 degrees...there is no requirement that the engine and surroundings remain undamaged. A full blade out will pretty much destroy the engine and usually ruin the nacelle due to torquing and shock loading. Anything outside the containment zone has low enough energy that it's not an immediate threat, as evidenced here where nothing actually penetrated the fuselage (which is extremely thin).
In this case, it wasn't bits going out the tail pipe that were the problem, it was bits that flew off the fan, bounced off the inlet, and headed in all manner of directions, some of which included the fuselage.
The exception to all this is the turbine disks...since they are functionally uncontainable, the requirement is just that a rotor burst doesn't jeopardize the safety of the aircraft.
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