Dang, this would make you crap your pants...
Southwest Airlines Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Turmoil
Southwest Airlines Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Turmoil
By Simon Hradecky, created Saturday, Nov 24th 2007 10:27Z, last updated Saturday, Nov 24th 2007 10:27Z |
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. |
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).