FAA grounds planes with Pratt & Whitney engines
The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday temporarily grounded planes using the type of Pratt & Whitney engine that blew apart over Colorado last weekend.
The FAA’s order applies to U.S. operators of airplanes equipped with PW4000 engines, which are used solely on Boeing 777s. Before the planes can fly again, operators must conduct a thermal acoustic image inspection of the large titanium fan blades at the front of each engine.
Officials from East Hartfordbased Pratt & Whitney were not immediately available for comment on Wednesday regarding the FAA grounding. But two industry consultants said several factors will prevent any long term impact to Pratt’s reputation.
“I don’t think it’s significant,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Virginiabased Teal Group. “It’s probably going to be a quick turnaround on the inspection. It’s not like the airlines are desperate to get their (passenger) capacity back in the air.”
Michael Boyd, president of a
Colorado-based airline consulting firm that bears his name, said because the scope of the problem is at this point limited to United Airlines, the average traveler is not going to focus on the manufacturer of the engine.
“If anything, it’s going to be more of a problem for Boeing,” Boyd said. “First the 737 Max, now this.”
The FAA grounded Boeing’s
737 Max aircraft for a period of 20 months that ended late last year following a pair of crashes that killed 346 people. It was discovered that a safety feature meant to stop the plane from climbing too fast and stalling had improperly forced the nose of the plane down, causing the crashes.
The FAA directive temporarily grounding Boeing’s 777 with certain types of Pratt & Whitney engines is a blow to United Airlines, which had 24 of the planes in service and is the only U.S. airline with the engine in its fleet.
“On Sunday, we voluntarily removed 24 Boeing 777 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines from our schedule,“said United spokesman David Gonzalez. “We’ve been working with the NTSB on their investigation and will comply with the FAA’s Emergency Airworthiness Directive to ensure all 52 of the impacted aircraft in our fleet meet our rigorous safety standards.”
A United flight from Denver to Honolulu made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff Saturday as pieces of the engine’s casing rained on suburban neighborhoods. None of the 231 passengers or 10 crew were hurt, and the flight landed safely.
Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said during a virtual news conference Monday night that a fractured fan blade found in the engine had visible signs of “damage consistent with metal fatigue.” The broken blade hit and fractured the blade next to it as the engine broke apart, according to a preliminary investigation.
Sumwalt said the blade that fractured first was flown on a private jet to Pratt & Whitney’s headquarters Monday night to be examined under the supervision of NTSB investigators.
“Our mission is to understand not only what happened, but why it happened, so that we can keep it from happening again,” he said.
The order means fan blades will need to be shipped to Pratt & Whitney for thermal acoustic imaging tests, the company said in a statement. About 125 Boeing 777 aircraft are powered by the PW4000-112 engine covered under the directive.
The previous inspection interval for Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines was 6,500 flight cycles. A flight cycle is defined as one takeoff and landing.
Pratt & Whitney employs about 11,000 at a plant in East Hartford and another large facility in Middletown, according to its latest report.