A Mainstay Used Throughout Industry -- WSJ
April 19 2018 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Robert Wall and Doug Cameron
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (April 19, 2018).
The engine failure that killed a passenger aboard a Southwest
Airlines Co. flight puts the spotlight on one of the industry's
most commonly used engines.
CFM International -- a joint venture between General Electric
Co. and France's Safran SA -- makes engines that have become a
mainstay of commercial aviation. The engines power most of Boeing
Co. and Airbus SE's single-aisle planes, the workhorses of the
industry.
On Tuesday, one of two CFM56-7B engines ruptured on a Boeing
737-700 operated by Southwest. The engine broke apart while the
plane was at cruising altitude, flying from New York's LaGuardia
Airport to Dallas Love Field, with 149 passengers and crew aboard.
Metal pieces struck the fuselage, though the details of what
happened inside the cabin are still unclear.
Southwest two years ago suffered a similar failure on another
CFM56 engine, forcing the plane to land but not resulting in
injuries.
A probe of that incident showed evidence of fatigue cracks in
some of the blades. In response, the Federal Aviation
Administration last year proposed enhanced inspections of certain
CFM engines. It hasn't yet made the safety fix mandatory. The
National Transportation Safety Board said it would examine whether
there were any common factors connecting the two CFM56 incidents at
Southwest.
The airline, meanwhile, said late Tuesday it was stepping up
inspections of the CFM56s used in its fleet. CFM International said
it was sending a team of experts to aid the NTSB probe. Korean Air
on Wednesday said it would inspect the fan blades on its 737s in
response to the incident.
The widespread use of the engine and its unusually dramatic
failure are likely to spur more scrutiny across fleets around the
globe. European air-safety regulators said Wednesday they were
"assessing the situation" and working with U.S. counterparts.
On average, a CFM56-powered plane takes off somewhere in the
world every two seconds. The CFM56-7B version involved in Tuesday's
incident has been in service since 1997 and is used in more than
6,700 airliners.
Engine failures are rare but aren't unheard of. Robert Sumwalt,
chairman of the NTSB, said investigators see about three to four
incidents each year.
A different engine that powered an Airbus A380 superjumbo
operated by Air France failed on a flight from Paris to Los Angeles
in September. The plane diverted to Goose Bay, Canada. The accident
investigation hasn't been completed.
Another on a Boeing 767 operated by American Airlines Group Inc.
blew up in 2016 on takeoff from Chicago O'Hare International
Airport because of a component manufacturing anomaly. Passengers
suffered injuries during the plane's evacuation.
Engines are the often-overlooked lifeblood of the aviation
industry. Engine makers spend billions of dollars to eke out
small-percentage improvements in fuel efficiency to woo airliner
buyers.
Airlines and plane makers have endured a recent run of
operational headaches because of problems with these mini power
plants. British aircraft-engine maker Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC last
week warned that some of its engines powering Boeing 787 Dreamliner
long-haul planes would require more frequent inspections because
components were wearing out faster than expected. U.S. regulators,
as a precaution, have required airlines that use those engines to
chart courses that bring planes closer to airfields to which they
could divert.
Airlines that uses those engines have had to ground planes and
cancel flights because of an earlier round of checks on them.
Rolls-Royce, no longer affiliated with the luxury-car maker, has
said it could take until at least 2021 to fix all the engines.
Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp., has
struggled with the development and production of its new geared
turbofan engine. The engine maker halted shipments to Airbus as it
works to fix the design of components, which have been wearing out
too soon. Airlines have had to idle planes in response to actions
taken by European air-safety regulators. Pratt has said it is
working to fix the problem.
CFM also is struggling with its newest engine, the Leap used on
Boeing's new 737 Max narrow-body and some Airbus A320 models. GE
Aviation President David Joyce last month said the company was
about six weeks late on engine deliveries to Boeing and Airbus.
--Eun-Young Jeong contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications The engine on an American
Airlines Boeing 767 blew up on takeoff in 2016 because of a
manufacturing anomaly of a component. A previous version
incorrectly gave the probable cause of the failure. (April 18)
Write to Robert Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com and Doug Cameron at
doug.cameron@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 19, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
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