FAA orders emergency jet engine inspections after US plane failure
NEW YORK: The Federal Aviation Administration ordered emergency inspections on Friday of jet engines like the one that ruptured during a recent Southwest Airlines flight, leaving a passenger dead.
“Fan blade failure due to cracking, if not addressed, could result in an engine in-flight shutdown (IFSD), uncontained release of debris, damage to the engine, damage to the airplane and possible airplane decompression,” the regulatory authority said.
In line with recommendations made earlier by engine maker CFM, the FAA ordered that all CFM567B engines that have performed 30,000 or more total accumulated flight cycles be inspected within 20 days.
That affects about 352 engines in the United States, or 681 worldwide.
Each inspection of the engines, which power Boeing 737 aircraft, takes about four hours, according to CFM International, a joint venture between America’s GE Aviation and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.
It says about 150 of the engines have already gone through the process.
A cycle concerns a complete flight, from engine start to takeoff and landing to complete shutdown.
Critics quickly criticised the FAA’S delay in taking corrective measures.
“The airlines are dictating to the FAA what they think should happen versus the FAA saying ‘No, you are going to do this right now,’” Gary Peterson, Vice-president of the Transport Workers Union International, told NBC News.
“In the old days, we would have had an airworthiness directive and we would be doing the work on the engines right now.”
William Mcgee, an aviation consumer rights advocate, said “the FAA should be more aggressive in ensuring that, when there is a problem, there is a fix.”
Once the inspections are completed, CFM recommended to repeat the process every 3,000 cycles — about two years in airline service — but the FAA did not require such a measure.
CFM also recommended that fan blades with more than 20,000 cycles be inspected by the end of August — affecting an additional 2,500 engines.