Yesterday southwest canceled around 50 flights for engine inspections. Today they are already at 111 flights canceled. Are the findings worse than anticipated? It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/southwest-flight-disruption/index.html

Better to do what is needed, then to have another engine failure. I'm sure every 737 operators are giving every plane worldwide extra TLC.

The CAA just p23 April 2018

Please find below details of new and amended Civil Aviation Authority Publications within your chosen categories.




EASA EAD 2018-0093-E: CFM International CFM56-7B engines - Engine - Fan Blades - Inspection
EASA Emergency Airworthiness Directive

Another thought is it’s better to get this done before the summer flying season, lest there would probably be even more flights affected.

MIflyer12 wrote:

mcdu wrote:

It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

AA/DL/UA have much smaller fleets of early-delivery 737NGs, both with respect to count and as a fraction of mainline aircraft. This situation is entirely predictable. Watch Alaska.

Supposedly while Alaska has some older 737NGs, they have already publicly stated they don't have any engines with 30,000 cycles on them, so I expect little to no operational issues.

How long would it take to inspect engines? Rephrased, how long would a plane be out of service?

smokeybandit wrote:

How long would it take to inspect engines? Rephrased, how long would a plane be out of service?

Less than 2 man hours per engine according to the original AD.

I do not think that is the issue.

The real problem is how many set ups of ultra sonic or certified test equipment do they have and how many mechanics are certificated to use it. If there is any spare equipment for rent or lease then every airline is standing in line to lease it.
Also just how many hours a day would you expect the certificated operators to work per day.

Just add that to the cycling planes to the equipment or visa versa.

The inspection part per se will actually be the easy part I would guess. Keeping track of blades, engines, airframes and joshuling aircraft will probably be the hard part.

Okie

smokeybandit wrote:

How long would it take to inspect engines? Rephrased, how long would a plane be out of service?

Depending on the inspectors, 6-8 hours for both engines if they find no problems and another 6-12 per engine if they have to replace any fan blades.

Southwest operates shorter flights than most other early 737NG operators. They tend to have high cycle numbers compared to other airlines. UA, DL, AA and AS all have 737s flying transcons as well as shorter flights.

Depending on the inspectors, 6-8 hours for both engines if they find no problems and another 6-12 per engine if they have to replace any fan blades.

This is pretty darn accurate. To do this inspection, you need to remove the fan blades, inspect them and reassemble. The inspection part itself doesn't take very long put it does hold up the reinstallation of the blades.
And after reassembly, engine runs need to be done.

A big issue is probably routing the aircraft that need the inspections to the right point, which is surely not any old airport, and at the right time. No airline has dozens of planes waiting in reserve so cancellations must happen for sure. Interesting will be the reporting phase and if we will see those results, i.e. how many "ticking blades" did they find?

Meanwhile, don't try to book a reservation on Southwest.com now (noon EDT Monday). It's not happening.

I got caught in this today; had boarded my flight in MCI and got the notification that my flight from MDW to IND was cancelled. Didn't have a ton of options other than to fly to MDW and try my luck there. Agent there told me they were cancelling a good number of flights today for the inspections.

They ended up not having seats available until 8:00pm so I cancelled my ticket and flew United.

I am going to assume that each fan blade will have to be removed and inspected. I found a pretty detailed video on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9EJLE9_ELI

Better safe, I guess some people are putting in some extra hours, contractors are hired and other maintenace if possible is being shifted. Can Southwest hire spare capacity from others?

Would Southwest be obliged to publicly announce the results of their testing? I'd sure be embarrassing to have to say "we found similar issues in X% of our engines"

I find the reporting requirement strange. Required for the SB, but not for the EAD? How can a standard, even a maintenance standard for these engines be arrived at, modified if necessary etc. if the FAA does not get ALL the data on how many defective blades were found, both on the under 30K cycles airframes and the over 30K's? This is no longer a maintenance subject, but a safety subject and that puts this in a whole different ballpark, right?

smokeybandit wrote:

Would Southwest be obliged to publicly announce the results of their testing? I'd sure be embarrassing to have to say "we found similar issues in X% of our engines"

This was my first thought when inspections were announced; glad I am not the only one. My answer:

Probably not. However, let us assume that they announce no other engines had the same issues. That would lead us to believe one of two things:

1) WN had two extremely unlikely events in their fleet that were each one-off anomalies and we are to trust it will not happen again
2) The inspection process being used cannot detect the defect/fatigue until it reaches a point where it separates and causes engine destruction

This would pose a very interesting PR conundrum; if a few cracks were found, do you say they were detected and fixed admitting that there is now a known issue and the inspections spared further damage and possibly a life or two or do you say you found none and trust the public to go "ok"? Each has their own set of pros and cons.

As of now, all I have heard are lots of inspections and clearing aircraft to return to service. I would think to reassure the flying public at large they will report a few older engines did have repairs performed out of an abundance of caution. Only time will tell.

I bet these emergency inspections are a lot more expensive than the routine inspections the FAA wanted would have been.

skyharborshome wrote:

smokeybandit wrote:

Would Southwest be obliged to publicly announce the results of their testing? I'd sure be embarrassing to have to say "we found similar issues in X% of our engines"

This was my first thought when inspections were announced; glad I am not the only one. My answer:

Probably not. However, let us assume that they announce no other engines had the same issues. That would lead us to believe one of two things:

1) WN had two extremely unlikely events in their fleet that were each one-off anomalies and we are to trust it will not happen again
2) The inspection process being used cannot detect the defect/fatigue until it reaches a point where it separates and causes engine destruction

This would pose a very interesting PR conundrum; if a few cracks were found, do you say they were detected and fixed admitting that there is now a known issue and the inspections spared further damage and possibly a life or two or do you say you found none and trust the public to go "ok"? Each has their own set of pros and cons.

As of now, all I have heard are lots of inspections and clearing aircraft to return to service. I would think to reassure the flying public at large they will report a few older engines did have repairs performed out of an abundance of caution. Only time will tell.

Besides your 1) and 2) we have to allow the possibility that both events had something else in common, such as neither blade was original, both installed by a tech from a shop that did the work incorrectly, whether original or replacement , a common marginal batch of blades or blade material, etc etc etc. A lot of date mining has to be done here to see if those two events had something in common, but it sure is easier than trying to find out what one isolated event had in common (!!!!!)

flyingclrs727 wrote:

I bet these emergency inspections are a lot more expensive than the routine inspections the FAA wanted would have been.

At this point there is no indication that the failure mechanism is the same - nor that the previous FAA specified inspection would have found the latest defect.

skyharborshome wrote:

smokeybandit wrote:

Would Southwest be obliged to publicly announce the results of their testing? I'd sure be embarrassing to have to say "we found similar issues in X% of our engines"

This was my first thought when inspections were announced; glad I am not the only one. My answer:

Probably not. However, let us assume that they announce no other engines had the same issues. That would lead us to believe one of two things:

1) WN had two extremely unlikely events in their fleet that were each one-off anomalies and we are to trust it will not happen again
2) The inspection process being used cannot detect the defect/fatigue until it reaches a point where it separates and causes engine destruction

This would pose a very interesting PR conundrum; if a few cracks were found, do you say they were detected and fixed admitting that there is now a known issue and the inspections spared further damage and possibly a life or two or do you say you found none and trust the public to go "ok"? Each has their own set of pros and cons.

As of now, all I have heard are lots of inspections and clearing aircraft to return to service. I would think to reassure the flying public at large they will report a few older engines did have repairs performed out of an abundance of caution. Only time will tell.

WN wont release the findings voluntary I think.... I am almost certain that those findings will be subpoenaed.. the likely hood of the results staying under wraps are slim to none

TWA302 wrote:

I am going to assume that each fan blade will have to be removed and inspected. I found a pretty detailed video on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9EJLE9_ELI

Interesting video. I find it fascinating that something so expensive and built so precisely needs Vaseline to lubricate the blade removal.

And the guy removing it is wearing a tie.

sunking737 wrote:

Better to do what is needed, then to have another engine failure. I'm sure every 737 operators are giving every plane worldwide extra TLC.

Absolutely. The attorney fees alone defending just one fatality-related lawsuit will cost more than these engine inspections! And your reputation as an airline wold take an awful hit if history repeated itself here.

Wn was not the only airline to push back. AA did too IIRC

mcdu wrote:

Yesterday southwest canceled around 50 flights for engine inspections. Today they are already at 111 flights canceled. Are the findings worse than anticipated? It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/southwest-flight-disruption/index.html

Just for perspective, 111 flights equates to less than 3 percent of the 4000 daily flights. I'm not sure that qualifies as "mass cancellations".

chrisair wrote:

TWA302 wrote:

I am going to assume that each fan blade will have to be removed and inspected. I found a pretty detailed video on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9EJLE9_ELI

Interesting video. I find it fascinating that something so expensive and built so precisely needs Vaseline to lubricate the blade removal.

And the guy removing it is wearing a tie.

The blades mating surfaces and the spacers get a Molybdenum Di sulfide lubricant. Only the elastometer spacers get petroleum based lubricant. As for AS, they made each fan blade traceable by serial number after the first SWA incident in 2016. They've been complying with the CFM SB since then even though their engines are well below the 30000 cycle threshold. They've also been inspecting the fan blades at each fan blade lubrication cycle(5500hrs/3000cy). AS also flies longer stage lengths. SWA has many more daily cycles which put the engine at take off and climb power more often than other carriers.

"Negligent" is a word fraught with legal implications. WN were not negligent. They understandably didn't want to disrupt their operations to the extent we're seeing today, for a situation that at the time appeared to be a one-off. (And, without an inspection mandate, I doubt that they would have gotten as much help from CFM, making it even more of a mess.) With 20-20 hindsight, AND assuming that the inspections turn up something useful, we can say that they should have disrupted things anyway, but there's no way that anyone could have predicted that from the initial incident. And we still have no proof that the inspections would have found anything relevant to the accident.

At this stage, calling WN negligent is just lawyer baiting IMO.

INFINITI329 wrote:

skyharborshome wrote:

smokeybandit wrote:

Would Southwest be obliged to publicly announce the results of their testing? I'd sure be embarrassing to have to say "we found similar issues in X% of our engines"

This was my first thought when inspections were announced; glad I am not the only one. My answer:

Probably not. However, let us assume that they announce no other engines had the same issues. That would lead us to believe one of two things:

1) WN had two extremely unlikely events in their fleet that were each one-off anomalies and we are to trust it will not happen again
2) The inspection process being used cannot detect the defect/fatigue until it reaches a point where it separates and causes engine destruction

This would pose a very interesting PR conundrum; if a few cracks were found, do you say they were detected and fixed admitting that there is now a known issue and the inspections spared further damage and possibly a life or two or do you say you found none and trust the public to go "ok"? Each has their own set of pros and cons.

As of now, all I have heard are lots of inspections and clearing aircraft to return to service. I would think to reassure the flying public at large they will report a few older engines did have repairs performed out of an abundance of caution. Only time will tell.

WN wont release the findings voluntary I think.... I am almost certain that those findings will be subpoenaed.. the likely hood of the results staying under wraps are slim to none

You obviously know little about airlines, manufacturers, and how they are regulated. WN will provide the results from these inspections to appropriate agencies and companies as part of the normal reporting process. It will be done deliberately and by totally routine processes. The Agencies and Companies receiving the information may use it as is appropriate to their mission and within the standard rules and procedures. If something significant is found - that may affect a future Directive, or even in the worst case a grounding.

How do you think Aviation got so safe and is so safe... because everyone shares key information; and there are totally standard procedures and protocols on how it is done.

Have a great day,

It will all be ok now, Chuck Schumer managed to find a camera crew and made an announcement that he is calling on the FAA to hold airlines more accountable for maintenance, thank God for Chuck Schumer, I don’t know how we would be able to manage life without his guidance.

dmg626 wrote:

It will all be ok now, Chuck Schumer managed to find a camera crew and made an announcement that he is calling on the FAA to hold airlines more accountable for maintenance, thank God for Chuck Schumer, I don’t know how we would be able to manage life without his guidance.

Politicians make me sick, particularly in an election year. Yes, they do some good as well. Some.

barney captain wrote:

mcdu wrote:

Yesterday southwest canceled around 50 flights for engine inspections. Today they are already at 111 flights canceled. Are the findings worse than anticipated? It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/southwest-flight-disruption/index.html

Just for perspective, 111 flights equates to less than 3 percent of the 4000 daily flights. I'm not sure that qualifies as "mass cancellations".

It looks like WN is up to 129 cancels 3% of schedule with 788 delays or 29% of their schedule. That appears to be a mass schedule impact. AS has the next highest cancels with 10 and that is a company struggling in a merger. The next US carrier is AA with a total of 5 cancels. So I would argue that the WN cancels are massive in comparison to their peers.

While they're at it, will they inspect more parts of the engine? Maybe a full over?

mcdu wrote:

barney captain wrote:

mcdu wrote:

Yesterday southwest canceled around 50 flights for engine inspections. Today they are already at 111 flights canceled. Are the findings worse than anticipated? It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/southwest-flight-disruption/index.html

Just for perspective, 111 flights equates to less than 3 percent of the 4000 daily flights. I'm not sure that qualifies as "mass cancellations".

It looks like WN is up to 129 cancels 3% of schedule with 788 delays or 29% of their schedule. That appears to be a mass schedule impact. AS has the next highest cancels with 10 and that is a company struggling in a merger. The next US carrier is AA with a total of 5 cancels. So I would argue that the WN cancels are massive in comparison to their peers.

Are all of those cxnld and delayed flights related to the AD, or are they all things operationally? How does 788 delayed flights compare to an average day?

Considering what's going on, I'm surprised it's not more.

[twoid][/twoid]

TWA302 wrote:

I am going to assume that each fan blade will have to be removed and inspected. I found a pretty detailed video on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9EJLE9_ELI

Are you sure they aren’t just NDT them on wing?

Tucker1 wrote:

While they're at it, will they inspect more parts of the engine? Maybe a full over?

Sounds dumb considering they need to get their aircraft in the air ASAP, but could it save time and money in the long term?

barney captain wrote:

mcdu wrote:

barney captain wrote:

Just for perspective, 111 flights equates to less than 3 percent of the 4000 daily flights. I'm not sure that qualifies as "mass cancellations".

It looks like WN is up to 129 cancels 3% of schedule with 788 delays or 29% of their schedule. That appears to be a mass schedule impact. AS has the next highest cancels with 10 and that is a company struggling in a merger. The next US carrier is AA with a total of 5 cancels. So I would argue that the WN cancels are massive in comparison to their peers.

Are all of those cxnld and delayed flights related to the AD, or are they all things operationally? How does 788 delayed flights compare to an average day?

Considering what's going on, I'm surprised it's not more.

I don’t track WN on a daily basis. I do know they rank very low in on-time percentage but I would be surprised if they have 30% of their flights delayed on a daily basis. It could just be the normal operational difficulty that WN has on a daily basis with the airplane groundings added into the mix. You are a WN guy so I am sure you could share the daily delay/cancel rate with everyone.

32andBelow wrote:

[twoid][/twoid]

TWA302 wrote:

I am going to assume that each fan blade will have to be removed and inspected. I found a pretty detailed video on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9EJLE9_ELI

Are you sure they aren’t just NDT them on wing?

This would be the ideal method to check for cracking or defects right across the fleet.

Ultrasonic can quickly show up faults or fatigue cracking without the need to get the spanners out and cause hideous delays. There is such a huge body of experience and specialist tools that maintenance can call on to quickly get through bulk checking (for a given value of quickly).

I would err on the side of WN just being unlucky in that two events happened in their engine pool as it's so large and so the odds are not in their favour. There are so many in service with huge hour counts it points to a normally bulletproof engine. Maybe even an extremely rare ingestion event? Who knows until metallurgists do their magic on that engine.

mcdu wrote:

barney captain wrote:

mcdu wrote:

It looks like WN is up to 129 cancels 3% of schedule with 788 delays or 29% of their schedule. That appears to be a mass schedule impact. AS has the next highest cancels with 10 and that is a company struggling in a merger. The next US carrier is AA with a total of 5 cancels. So I would argue that the WN cancels are massive in comparison to their peers.

Are all of those cxnld and delayed flights related to the AD, or are they all things operationally? How does 788 delayed flights compare to an average day?

Considering what's going on, I'm surprised it's not more.

I don’t track WN on a daily basis. I do know they rank very low in on-time percentage but I would be surprised if they have 30% of their flights delayed on a daily basis. It could just be the normal operational difficulty that WN has on a daily basis with the airplane groundings added into the mix. You are a WN guy so I am sure you could share the daily delay/cancel rate with everyone.

WN does have abysmal on-time performance. For the month, only 46.1% of their flights have departed on-time. This is about normal for them, give or take a few percentage points.

PlanesNTrains wrote:

dmg626 wrote:

It will all be ok now, Chuck Schumer managed to find a camera crew and made an announcement that he is calling on the FAA to hold airlines more accountable for maintenance, thank God for Chuck Schumer, I don’t know how we would be able to manage life without his guidance.

Politicians make me sick, particularly in an election year. Yes, they do some good as well. Some.

Except Schumer isn't up for re-election this year.

mcdu wrote:

Yesterday southwest canceled around 50 flights for engine inspections. Today they are already at 111 flights canceled. Are the findings worse than anticipated? It doesn’t appear to be affecting the other 737 operators with mass cancellations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/southwest-flight-disruption/index.html

Didn't Southwest go through this in the 2000s?. It sounds awfully familiar!.

flyguy84 wrote:

mcdu wrote:

barney captain wrote:

Are all of those cxnld and delayed flights related to the AD, or are they all things operationally? How does 788 delayed flights compare to an average day?

Considering what's going on, I'm surprised it's not more.

I don’t track WN on a daily basis. I do know they rank very low in on-time percentage but I would be surprised if they have 30% of their flights delayed on a daily basis. It could just be the normal operational difficulty that WN has on a daily basis with the airplane groundings added into the mix. You are a WN guy so I am sure you could share the daily delay/cancel rate with everyone.

WN does have abysmal on-time performance. For the month, only 46.1% of their flights have departed on-time. This is about normal for them, give or take a few percentage points.

I really don't think D0 matters as much as A15. Most passenger's care about A15, D0 is just one of the metrics that affects that.

[/quote]
The blades mating surfaces and the spacers get a Molybdenum Di sulfide lubricant. Only the elastometer spacers get petroleum based lubricant. As for AS, they made each fan blade traceable by serial number after the first SWA incident in 2016. They've been complying with the CFM SB since then even though their engines are well below the 30000 cycle threshold. They've also been inspecting the fan blades at each fan blade lubrication cycle(5500hrs/3000cy). AS also flies longer stage lengths. SWA has many more daily cycles which put the engine at take off and climb power more often than other carriers.[/quote]

Not entirely accurate. AS started tracking fan blades in 2012 prior to the introduction of the -7BE engine. AS started inspecting these after the 2016 event. This is true regarding the fan lube inspection, but AS inspects all blades regardless of engine time or blade part number. You have the interval incorrect, but it's close enough.

PITingres wrote:

"Negligent" is a word fraught with legal implications. WN were not negligent. They understandably didn't want to disrupt their operations to the extent we're seeing today, for a situation that at the time appeared to be a one-off. (And, without an inspection mandate, I doubt that they would have gotten as much help from CFM, making it even more of a mess.) With 20-20 hindsight, AND assuming that the inspections turn up something useful, we can say that they should have disrupted things anyway, but there's no way that anyone could have predicted that from the initial incident. And we still have no proof that the inspections would have found anything relevant to the accident.

At this stage, calling WN negligent is just lawyer baiting IMO.

WN fought the order to inspect the suspected engines or rather fan blades inside of 12 month, now they have to do it inside 30 days. It was actually predicted from the first accident that more fan blades could break, that was why they should have been inspected.
People should understand that this was a huge failing of the system. One accident should be enough to take action, so that repeat accidents do not occur. The fault is all at the FAA and its cosy relationship with USA aircraft manufacturers and airlines.

Today 4/24 is not shaping up well at WN so far. Looks like at 0830 eastern they are leading all US carriers by a wide margin with 44 cancels and 123 delayed flights. Hard to blame the operation for those numbers when the next closest US carrier is AA with 3 delays and 13 cancels.

There appears to be something deeper to this WN meltdown. Will have to see how they finish the day but the trend today is not good. If the cancel numbers grow by a large amount during the day that shows WN is hedging its bets on the engines and losing.

The customers should be the ones most upset. WN is not taking the steps to proactively cancel an appropriate amount of flights. Thus creating misonnects and larger travel disruptions to the customer closer to departure time. Perhaps they don’t want to have to attempt to rebook all those customers at once. But if WN knows they will be canceling a segment later in the day they should post that ASAP to allow the cusotmer to better find other options.

I have never heard that WN fought the need for inspection. They fought the timeframe for the original order because it wildly under-estimated the number of engines that WN would have to inspect. That's not quite the same thing.

I don't disagree that there should have been more urgency felt all around, but again, that's 20-20 hindsight. Nobody predicted that another fan blade would break AND shred an inlet AND hit just the wrong place on the fuselage within the next couple years. In any case, it was the word "negligence" that I was (and am) objecting to.

Discarding all else for a second (just theoretically for the sake of analysis) I wonder if the cost of repairing or replacing that engine alone would make a more aggressive inspection schedule pay for itself, i.e. just be a sound business decision? This is assuming the damage analysis shows that the current inspection protocol would have found this "bad blade". My understanding is that these engines cost a bundle to scrap or rebuild, more than the cost of all these inspections, especially if they could be combined with the routine maintenance schedule.

I think the real issue is the amount of test equipment available. Both engines on a single airplane can easily be inspected on an overnight visit. The fan blades get pulled from the engine, a very routine operation that any line station can do. They get done to relube the mating surface at the hub all the time. The problem is the test equipment for the AD inspection. Very few stations have the capability to do the Ultrasound test. Each airline may only own one or two test boxes and only a few inspectors that are trained on it's use. Some smaller operators may not even have this capability in house and have to hire a outside company to do the inspections.

PITingres wrote:

I have never heard that WN fought the need for inspection. They fought the timeframe for the original order because it wildly under-estimated the number of engines that WN would have to inspect. That's not quite the same thing.

I don't disagree that there should have been more urgency felt all around, but again, that's 20-20 hindsight. Nobody predicted that another fan blade would break AND shred an inlet AND hit just the wrong place on the fuselage within the next couple years. In any case, it was the word "negligence" that I was (and am) objecting to.

Well sort of, CFM did call for sooner inspections and predicted other high cycle fan blades could fail, and once that occurs in flight conditions the consequences can be pretty wide ranging and unpredictable. You can make an argument that their recommendations were conservative or erring on the side of caution, but it's a little disingenuous to paint the possibility that unfortunately materialized as totally unforeseeable.