Federal aviation officials on Sunday ordered an intensified inspection of some Boeing 777 aircraft after an engine outage on a United flight from Denver caught fire and crashed, spreading it into a Colorado area before landing safely. has.
The inspections apply to 777s equipped with Pratt & Whitney model PW4000 engines, said Steve Dickson, the federal aviation administrator.
Dickson said he made the decision – which is likely to take aircraft out of service – after consultation with a team of air safety experts.
“Based on the initial information, we have concluded that the inspection interval needs to be sharpened for the hollow fan blades that are unique to this engine model, which is only used on Boeing 777 aircraft,” he said.
United said it immediately grounded its fleet of 24 Boeing aircraft equipped with the Pratt & Whitney engines. The airline said it was cooperating with federal investigators and regulators and that it expected a small number of customers to be inconvenienced during the exchange.
Federal officials said only the United States, South Korea and Japan use aircraft with the PW4000 engine, and United is the only U.S. airline to use it.
Reuters, referring to the Japanese airline information center, said the country also prevented aircraft from flying with the Pratt & Whitney engine.
Neither Boeing nor Pratt & Whitney responded immediately to a request for comment.
The video of a passenger on United Flight 328 – which transported 231 people to Honolulu on Saturday – shows one of the plane’s flaming engines falling apart in the air. A pilot on the flight reported a ‘mayday’ and told air traffic control that the plane had an ‘engine failure’.
Large pieces of metal fell in a neighborhood in Broomfield, Colorado, although there were no injuries. The pilot turned the plane over and landed safely at Denver International Airport.