US orders jet engine checks after explosion
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — US airline regulators have ordered inspections on engine fan blades like the one that snapped off a Southwest Airlines plane, leading to the death of a woman who was partially blown out a window.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement late Wednesday comes nearly a year after the engine’s manufacturer recommended the additional inspections, and a month after European regulators ordered their airlines to do the work.
Pressure for the FAA to act grew after an engine on a Southwest plane blew apart on Tuesday, showering the aircraft with debris and shattering a window.
The plane, which was headed from New York to Dallas, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
Investigators said a blade that broke off mid-flight and triggered the fatal accident was showing signs of metal fatigue — microscopic cracks that can splinter open under the kind of stress placed on jetliners and their engines.
The National Transportation Safety Board also blamed metal fatigue for an engine failure on a Southwest plane in Florida in 2016.
That led manufacturer CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France’s Safran SA, to recommend last June that airlines conduct the inspections of fan blades on many Boeing 737s.
Federal investigators were still trying to determine how a window came out of the plane.
The woman sitting next to it, identified by family members as 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan, was wearing a seat belt. Philadelphia’s medical examiner said the banking executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, died from blunt impact trauma to her head, neck and torso.
It is unknown whether the FAA’s original directive would have forced Southwest to quickly inspect the engine that blew up.