Korean Air, Asiana to ground Boeing 777 after engine incident
koreaherald.com
koreaherald.com
Japanese authorities issued a NOTAM requesting airlines not to fly the affected planes over its territory. The US FAA is about to issue an emergency directive soon but only expected to decrease the inspection intervals of the affected parts rather than ground the planes completely.
The Aviation Herald has all the updates: http://avherald.com/h?article=4e35503b
To be fair they did mention that the engine type was the same, along with the fact that both aircraft were headed for Hawaii.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/22/us/united-airlines-2018-engin...
The fan blade had a stress fracture. So they'll need to do an immediate ultrasonic scan of the blades, which should clear the engines for flight, and then figure out why the maintenance schedule didn't catch the fracture.
What's insane about the FAA's approach? They are ordering immediate inspections of all fan blades in these engines for cracks like the one that apparently brought this one down.
https://twitter.com/breakingavnews/status/136379347594735616...
i am a native and this confuses me constantly.
the windshield wipers in my car change their speed based on a UX showing an in increasingingly long bar. i can never tell if it represents time or 1/time until i futz with it.
I have driven car where the pictogram meant "amount of rain", the longer bar meaning more rain and therefore a shorter interval.
Yes, you are right to be confused. You dont know the UX of car. Why did you think this was worth commenting?
> (the one closest to off or auto)
the on/off toggle is separate from the speed dial. there is no obvious (to me) directionality.
American cars in contrast have just one control: it starts with off, then does intervals, finally the shortest interval, then low speed and then high speed.
But your classification of European/American cars isn't accurate either. I drive an Italian car (well, but surprise, it's Fiat Chrysler) and the wiper controls makes sense, like what you refer as "American cars". Search for Mercedes Benz wiper controls on Youtube, that also makes sense. BMW's one is strange, the Ford one looks confusing but I didn't bother to look for a video.
Alas, can't edit the comment anymore, and probably shouldn't anyway, considering the discussion it sparked.
Thank you. I'll show myself out.
When inspection frequency gets too low, airplanes fail, leading to more frequent inspections.
When inspection frequency gets too high, airlines and authorities decide to save money, leading to less frequent inspections.
So the inspection schedules (somewhat) satisfy Hook's Law, and thus we should expect wavelike oscillations.
[Edit: The system also requires momentum. That's provided by labor unions agreements, maintenance contracts, and the time needed to change regulations.]
Thanks, I'll be waiting for you at the pub.
More often such aircraft are just retired. One defining difference between upstart airlines and "legacy" airlines is that the upstarts generally have new aircraft with lower inspection requirements. An interesting paper would address the inevitable evolution of new airlines as as their airframes age. When do they first try to transition to higher-profit services? When do they hit their first period of labor unrest? I theorize it is a function of aircraft age.
At least a few airlines don't ever buy aircraft. Instead they lease them with the intention of returning them moment they require more frequent inspections.
It's... complicated. Very complicated.
Boeing doesn't seem to be at fault here. The particular engine is from P&W and they make engines for Airbus and others as well. I can't see how any of this should be extremely negative long term for neither boeing or P&W.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal
United Technologies is the result of the manufacturing interests east of the Mississippi and Boeing got everything west.
Why would you expect grounding 128 planes, nearly half of which weren't even being used, due to a problem with a part that Boeing doesn't even produce, to affect Boeing stock?
It just sucks for them to be in the news again for airworthiness. I might considering investing in them right now to be honest.
When one buys a big jet you pick out what engine you want to buy and slap onto it. It’s a particular engine they’re concerned about, not the 777 airframe itself.
As far as I know, newer B77* generally use GE or RR engines. The PW ones are old at this point, and also represent the smallest and decreasing share, so most planes of this type aren't affected. United (or one of its predecessors) was an early customer, and I think PW was the only engine option at launch.
(Not my area of expertise, so I'd appreciate a correction if I got something wrong.)
The only thing is that the newest 777 variants (777-200LR and -300ER) only offer GE as an engine option, there isn't even a RR choice.
British Airways for example went with GE90s, and some airlines like El Al went with Rolls Royce Trent 800s.
Airbus A330
Boeing 747-400
Boeing 767/KC-46
Boeing 777
McDonnell Douglas MD-11
Since the issue is most likely with fracture detection during maintenance inspection and P&W introduced new procedures for that a few years back, its likely the issue is with the tech being used or the procedures. Which would mean any P&W engines using the same technologies and procedures to detect fan and turbine blade cracks would be affected.
It is like me buying a car from Ford and saying I don't want the Ecoboost turbo 4 but rather that V8 from the Raptor.
The engines are still type rated for the specific aircraft. Some aircraft might only have one engine type rated so there isn’t much choice. Others might have multiple engines to choose from, from multiple manufacturers. That’s the case with many commercial airliners.
> These days, the engines are often leased, not bought, as part of a "power generation package"...The only physical difference between two "different versions" of a particular engine type, with different advertised power ratings, may [be] the electronic engine control system. In that situation, the airline might negotiate a "total power generation" deal where they only pay for the "higher rated" engine when they actually use it.
So they payed Unisys a not so small chunk of money to "unlock" the second CPU board which was always present inside the mainframe that was installed.
As a PC guy I was gobsmacked.
If x carrier standardized on PW or Rolls engines, it makes sense to try and keep their fleet on that engine. It simplifies maintenance, what parts need to be kept in stock etc.
If you have a fleet of rolls engines and one batch of planes running PW then you have to set aside entire storage, training and supply chains for a single batch.
From Boeing’s perspective, they can sell more airframes with a modular setup that allows the carriers to choose their powerplants. Especially in a worldwide setup where a rolls Royce may be cheaper in one market and a PW cheaper in another across a pond
---
[0]: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1181845/rolls-r...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=PW-4077+%22airworthiness+directive...
This is at least the third engine--with Trent and GE--so maybe those guys had their share of AD's. Also props to the 777 platform for being modular here and bulletproof in general.
edit. It's obviously a tradeoff of accepting a certain number of (usually) contained survivable fan events vs being able to afford flying them.
While literally true, in all practical terms those airframes are grounded. Engines can be swapped but it isn't as simple as swapping a V8 for a V6. These are expensive and physically large objects. There aren't enough spares available to re-engine so many airframes, and it would take years to build a new supply. So any airframe with the listed engines is essentially grounded until the problem can be addressed.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/22/dutch-inves...
The chance is small (though big enough to be considered), but they could be related
The other 7 hull losses were
* a BA flight landing short of LHR due to iced up fuel [2],
* Emirates crash landing in Dubai due to a botched go-around [3], and
* two Malaysian Airlines flights that had nothing to do with the aircraft (the probable pilot suicide/mass murder of MH370, and MH17 shot down over the Crimean), and
* three aircraft burning out on the ground (EgyptAir, Singaporean Air, Ethiopian).
Amazingly, there were only 3 fatalities with the Asiana crash (two not wearing seatbelts, one run over by fire truck), 1 with the Emirates crash (firefighter, not passenger), and 0 with the BA accident.
Only the BA flight really revealed a problem with the aircraft which appears to have been fixed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
(Martin-Baker is an ejection seat manufacturer.)
The quote may be from the 1970's, associated with the F-14, its troubled placeholder P&W TF30 engine, and maybe then early TF100 problems.[1]
Brief googling does not suggest P&W airline engines are atypically problematic.
But the engine technology envelope has historically been an aircraft bottleneck, and therefore pushed hard, with associated failure. Thus the quote. And China's ongoing difficulty manufacturing airline engines. Which remain challenging[2].
> Powerplant makers face conflicting demands for performance, reliability and huge production rates [...] “I’m a little bit irritated that over the years we as an airline, and the industry, have been subjected to the requirements of the propulsion manufacturers, and to an extent the airframe manufacturers, where we are expected to deal with quality-control issues, design issues etc, and operate these aircraft and engines and take whatever consequences there are when they don’t work,” [2](2019)
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Storm_Over_Iraq/DqaZBwA... [2] https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/everything-you-need-to...
> Dickson said that his team has 'reviewed all available safety data following yesterday's incident,' and 'based on the initial information, we concluded that the inspection interval should be stepped up for the hollow fan blades that are unique to this model of engine, used solely on Boeing 777 airplanes'.
Hamilton Standard fan blades used to have cracks that went unnoticed during rebuilds because of faulty inspection and repair procedures. This caused 3 accidents including this one in Georgia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Southeast_Airlines_....
And The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA), in terms of knock-on effect, is down 3.9% pre-market?
Not to be confused with BA the airline
These Aircraft are designed to be in flight constantly maximizing revenue. With the pandemic grounding so many planes for such extended amounts of unplanned time, I wonder if we are beginning to see gaps in maintenance procedures for aircraft returning to service after extended downtime.