China Eastern engine failure

A airbus A330 suffered a nasty engine failure by the looks of it after taking off from Sydney. News Story

a reply to: Woody510

Wow, that is a big hole!

It was a Peking ducks fault.....it didn't duck.

Wow. An engine cowling blows apart and air traffic control makes the plane circle for an hour to burn fuel before landing them. Imagine being the man / woman sitting in that seat having to look at that engine for an hour straight. That probably seemed like 100 eternities.

a reply to: Woody510

This makes the second time in a month that an A330 suffered a similar uncontained engine failure.

EgyptAir MS955

Weird.. The blades on the inside look perfectly fine. From another pic. So I saw a comment that this has nothing to do with Airbus, and that the airlines are who pick which engine they want in it? Is this true Zaph?

a reply to: Outlier13

Landing overweight could be more dangerous than flying with one engine shutdown. There is a very real danger of damage to the airframe of a landing gear collapse if they land too heavy.

a reply to: Zaphod58

In a dire emergency can they dump fuel?

originally posted by: iTruthSeeker
Weird.. The blades on the inside look perfectly fine.

In a turbo fan engine there are many sequential compression fans, each squeezing the air to a smaller package.

If I had to guess, there was a problem with the blades behind the initial compression blades. Usually the second and third compression blades can be visually inspected by simply looking past the first.

Either they need to up their inspections (reduce number of hours between scopes) or there is a design failure of small proportions.

a reply to: D8Tee

Some aircraft can. I'm not sure about the A330, but I would assume so. They have some checklists that they need to complete before landing too, so part of the time they were flying, they were preparing to land, and running their emergency checklists. Honestly, with the engines they have today, even losing one like this isn't a dire emergency anymore though.

Both the EgyptAir and this flight have the Trent 772B-60 engine. Which makes me wonder if there's an issue they're finding with them, since both had remarkably similar failure modes. The two were not built next to each other, so this might be a larger problem.

EgyptAir SU-GCG

China Eastern B-6099

a reply to: Zaphod58

From the looks of it they're lucky the fuselage wasn't damaged.

this buzzed my area.

not something i (nor my neighbors) wish to ever endure again, for you it's just a news story.. for many of us south of Sydney it was a airborne nightmare about to become much worse.

I'm glad it ended well, but it should never have happened.

a reply to: Xarian6

It wasn't as bad as the media made it out to be. The A330 is perfectly capable of flying on one engine, even at near takeoff weight, and they would have been lighter after getting rid of fuel weight.

You're right about how it shouldn't have happened though. One of the things they test for is that the engine can survive an internal blade failure, without it penetrating the cowling. The failed portions of the engine should have gone through the engine, and shelled it out, instead of blowing through the side of the cowling like it did.

a reply to: Woody510

They both were. They build kevlar into the cowling now, to prevent uncontained failures. Before that, they had several passengers killed and seriously injured when engines failed and threw parts through the fuselage into the cabin.

originally posted by: Tempter

originally posted by: iTruthSeeker
Weird.. The blades on the inside look perfectly fine.

In a turbo fan engine there are many sequential compression fans, each squeezing the air to a smaller package.

If I had to guess, there was a problem with the blades behind the initial compression blades. Usually the second and third compression blades can be visually inspected by simply looking past the first.

Either they need to up their inspections (reduce number of hours between scopes) or there is a design failure of small proportions.

The hole, (I am presuming the cowling is a composite) looks to be ahead of the fans, but I guess we'll find out more later.

a reply to: smurfy

Both are, which makes it odd. Something had to come forward, leaving very little damage to the fan blades, and rip the hole in the cowling, unless there was some kind of fatigue failure in the cowling.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Seems to have been a spate of uncontained failures recently though from different manufacturers. Are carriers cutting corners?

a reply to: Woody510

Engines are hitting power levels and RPMs that are far beyond engines even 25 or 30 years ago. There are engines out there that turn in 100,000 pounds of thrust or more. And they're looking for more out of newer engines. They're going to have to find something that prevents uncontained failures better than kevlar as engines go forward.

The 772B-60 runs at a 36:1 pressure ratio. The JT9D on the 767-300 runs at 23.4:1, the CF6 runs at about 27:1, while the RB211 and PW4052 are about the same pressure range.

a reply to: Zaphod58

It was pretty scary zaph..

Imagine a low flying A330 going over your suburb,in darkness & unannounced, and then a big ass BANG..

Just imagine.

I don't have to Imagine.

From what i can gather.. it was calmer on the plane than on the ground last night.

Just chiming in on how it was for us out south... on the ground.. not amused.
and yeah.. it stinks of cost cutting, not just this event.. but i have been following recent events the past few years and there's a either problem along the production line.. or the atmosphere is shredding aircraft apart slowly and maintenance isn't keeping up (or can't).