Jet Engine Blows on Southwest Flight

[SEIndSAM]

Dang, this would make you crap your pants...

Southwest Airlines Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Turmoil

 

[littletommy]

That's gotta be a horrible feeling, for the passengers AND the crew, my hat is off to that crew for keeping it together (literally). Good to know there are professionals out there ready to take care of business.

 

[femurphy77]

I saw that earlier, it looks like the fan shelled out. They're lucky it didn't destroy the wing or shred the cabin, there would have been a decidedly different outcome!

 

[chocktaw2]

They took it out of service. No

Luck played a factor.

 

[l1n5c0tt]

They're vary lucky. That could have been bad.

 

[BugI02]

Does this seem familiar? Based on picture and description looks like this is what happened. Same type of aircraft (737-300)

Accident: SouthWest B733 near Dallas on Nov 17th 2007, uncontained engine failure enroute​

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By Simon Hradecky, created Saturday, Nov 24th 2007 10:27Z, last updated Saturday, Nov 24th 2007 10:27Z​ ​

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By Simon Hradecky, created Wednesday, Jun 24th 2009 21:28Z, last updated Wednesday, Jun 24th 2009 21:28Z​

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The NTSB released their final report concluding, that the probable cause was: "A total loss of engine power due to the No. 2 engine experiencing a release of its fan spinner through the fan cowl as a result of an unidentified object striking the spinner, separating it from the fan disk and causing the spinner to be ingested into the fan blades." Examination of the right hand engine #2 revealed, that the forward and rear spinner cone were no longer attached to the fan disk, a large hole was noticed on the right hand side of the fan cowl just forward of the fan case. All fan blades exhibited heavy airfoil damage with all blade roots remaining installed in the disk. Several blades fractured near the platform. Metallurgic examination showed no fatigue, all fractures were consistent with overstress. All 38 fan blade spacers showed no fretting marks on any of the front faces, however four sequential spacers exhibited axial distortion of their lug in the forward direction. The engine manufacturer CFM concluded, that a severe axial load was applied to the spacer through the rear spinner cone before the spinner cone release. Based on the findings so far possible sources of foreign object ingestion were examined. No bird remains or traces of bird ingestion were found. There had been prior events where water leaks from the forward lavatory was suspected to have turned into ice during flight and broken off the airplane's forward service panel. That ice was ingested into engine #2 leading the shut down of the engine in those prior events. Airworthiness Directives (AD) had been issued to mitigate and remove the problem. N676SW was found to be in compliance with those ADs. The service panel showed no signs of fluid streaks or leaks. An energy dispersive spectroscopy was performed with the fan blades to identify materials transferred to and deposited onto the fan blades. All materials identified came from the spinner cone or the inlet cowl.

 

[Kutnupe14]

I saw that earlier, it looks like the fan shelled out. They're lucky it didn't destroy the wing or shred the cabin, there would have been a decidedly different outcome!

I'd imagine that is a very remote possibility since the planes are designed to still fly with the loss of an engine. But, things still happen... though I'm pretty confident in our engineers and mechanics (stateside, of course).

 

[SnoopLoggyDog]

The Fan Case looks intact.

From the picture, it looks like the Inlet Cowl suffered a structural failure, got sucked into the spinner and fan blades, which caused the cowling to fragment and cause further damage.

2. Fan Spinner is intect in the above photo.

Good video on engine damage;

[video=youtube;osAT6mwkr94]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAT6mwkr94[/video]

 

[jkaetz]

With regards to failures, the southwest failure is no where near as bad as the Qantas 32 failure. That engine looks like it contained the failure unlike the Qantas failure which sent the turbine disk in many different directions and damaged all kinds of systems.

 

[femurphy77]

I'd imagine that is a very remote possibility since the planes are designed to still fly with the loss of an engine. But, things still happen... though I'm pretty confident in our engineers and mechanics (stateside, of course).

A strip of metal brought down the concorde, if the fan blades had penetrated the cabin a catastrophic failure is very likely. Blade penetration of the wings (fuel tanks) can cause a fuel leak that could be ignited by the engine if it starts stalling and you do the 737 impression of a 747 off Long Island.

Yes they are designed to fly with the loss of one engine and a good flight crew can even save one if the engine fails during takeoff but when you get into severe structural damage at 30,000 feet it might as well be a Russian missile over the Ukraine.

Fortunately in this case with more info the fan disk didn't shell out!

 

[avboiler11]

Reportedly the engine had an uncontained failure of a fan blade, which hit the fuselage and somewhat penetrated the pressure vessel and caused a loss of depressurization (not explosive or rapid) but did not go all "JT8D" on the occupants and cause injury.

Don't know if that happened before or after the engine anti-ice cowl separated from the airframe; evidently it wouldn't be the first time a CFM56 engine had a EAI overpressure that caused a kaboom of the cowl.