After Denver incident, Boeing suspends 128 777 planes
A Boeing 777/200 of the American company United Airlines at the airport of Denver (Colorado), July 30, 2020. AFP - DANIEL SLIM
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
The American aircraft manufacturer grounded 128 of its aircraft on Sunday, February 21, the day after a spectacular engine failure on one of these aircraft over Colorado.
A rain of debris from the plane had descended on the metropolitan area of Denver.
The American Federal Aviation Regulatory Authority (FAA) ordered additional inspections on the same day on certain Boeing 777-type commercial aircraft.
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The suspended planes are the same model as the Boeing 777 used for the United Airlines flight to Hawaii, equipped with the Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines, according to a statement from rival Airbus, cited by
NBC
.
Sixty-nine of these planes were in service and 59 more in storage, says Boeing.
Flight suspensions will be maintained until the FAA identifies an "
appropriate inspection protocol
" for the aircraft.
Earlier this Sunday, FAA official Steve Dickson posted a statement on Twitter: “
After consulting with my team of aviation safety experts about yesterday's [Saturday] engine failure on board 'a Boeing 777 aircraft in Denver, I asked them to issue an Emergency Airworthiness Directive that would require immediate or extensive inspections of Boeing 777 aircraft equipped with certain Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines
.
This will likely mean that some planes will be taken out of service.
"
Only the United States, South Korea and Japan use planes equipped with the PW4000 engine and United Airlines is the only American company equipped with it.
According to the information center of the Japanese aeronautical service, quoted by
Reuters
, the Japanese Ministry of Transport has ordered Japan Airlines and ANA to also leave their Boeing 777 on the ground time to take other measures.
Rain of debris
A United Airlines Boeing 777-220, which had taken off Saturday from Denver, Colorado for Honolulu, Hawaii with 231 passengers and 10 crew members, had to turn around in an emergency after the fire in its right reactor.
The aircraft was able to land safely at Denver Airport and none of its occupants were injured.
A video taken by a passenger on flight UA328 shows the right engine of the plane in flames and shows that the damaged engine fairing is completely missing.
As the Boeing returned to the airport, a shower of debris, some large, fell in a residential area in Broomfield, a suburb of Denver.
No one was injured on the ground, according to local authorities.
►
To read also: United States: rain of debris from a plane in difficulty on the city of Denver
A new crisis after the 737 MAX?
Steve Dickson, the FAA official, said a preliminary review of safety data revealed the need for additional fan blade checks for the affected reactor type.
"
Based on the initial information,
" he said, "
we concluded that the interval between inspections should be shortened for the hollow fan blades, which exist only on this type of engine, used only on Boeings. 777.
"
The American aircraft manufacturer has had a serious problem in recent years with another of its models, the 737 MAX.
The plane was
banned from flying in March 2019
after two accidents that killed 346, that of Lion Air in Indonesia in October 2018 (189 dead) and that of Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019 in Ethiopia (157 dead).
►
To read also: The disappointments multiply for Boeing
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