Fire on United Airlines Flight 328 on February 20, 2021
The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued its final report on the United Airlines Flight 328 incident, which resulted in serious injuries Fail in the engine shortly after takeoff from Denver Airport on February 20, 2021. The report concludes that the probable cause of the incident was Failure due to wear of a right turbine blade.
You may be interested in: The technical error that led to the suspension of United Airlines flights
According to the NTSB, this is Failure in turbine blade was partly due to this inadequate controls which showed no signs of cracks at a low level. In addition, manufacturer Pratt & Whitney’s inadequate inspection intervals meant that cracks went unnoticed and ultimately led to wear-and-tear failures.
The report also notes that the severity of engine failure has increased following blade failure design and turbine inlet testing. These elements did not ensure that the intake could adequately dissipate the energy of an in-flight fan blade loss, which would limit further damage.
Parts of a Boeing 777 crashed in residential areas on the outskirts of Denver on February 20, 2021 (Portal)
Fortunately, neither passengers nor crew members were injured. There were also no injuries on the ground from debris that fell from the aircraft as it safely returned to the runway in Denver. However, one vehicle and one home were damaged when the intake lip skin and fan shroud bracket were damaged.
You may be interested: The US backed Guatemala’s presidential change and opposed prosecutors’ attempts to undermine democracy
Police in Broomfield, Colorado showed it Photos of the debris that fell from this Boeing 777-200 that left for Honolulu and had to make an emergency landing 24 minutes after takeoff.
Shortly after this incident in February 2021, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) all aircraft suspended registered in the country for more than a year with the same PW4000 series engines.
Parts of the engine intake, fan shrouds and thrust reversers fell off and fell onto a public park and residential areas (Portal)
The Denver emergency also came less than three years after the death of a Southwest Airlines passenger when a fan blade on another model ruptured and parts of the engine casing turned to shrapnel and hit the plane. Other fan blade failures occurred on a United plane flying to Hawaii in 2018 and on a Japan Airlines Boeing 777 in 2020.
You may be interested in: Everything you need to know about obtaining residency in the United States
This series of events raised concerns that long-held assumptions about fan blades were wrong: they failed much sooner than expected. The FAA began requiring more frequent inspections.
The incident left no injuries on the plane or on the ground (Portal)
The blade that shattered over Denver was broken Assessments at a Pratt facility in 2014 and again in 2016. In the second case, the software found two signs of “low level” on the blade, but an inspector concluded it was “camera noise” or loose sand.
The NTSB said the blade should have been disassembled, repainted and reexamined, or the “ambiguous evidence” should have been forwarded to a team for further investigation. The NTSB said neither had occurred.
At that time, these inspections were mandatory every 6,500 flights and the rotor blades did not have to be replaced as long as they passed the inspection.
(With information from AP)