The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a maintenance records group would be formed to investigate the history of the Boeing 777 engine after it failed on United Airlines flight # 328 and burst into flames shortly after takeoff on Saturday.
“Our mission is to understand not only what happened, but also why it happened so that we can prevent it again,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt told a news conference Monday night.
Sumwalt stressed that the investigation is still in the preliminary stage. Asked if the specific engine was inspected after another engine outage on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2018, Sumwalt said it was a question that would be answered pending an investigation into the maintenance team.
Boeing recommended that airlines haul all 777s with the kind of engine that took off from Denver this past weekend, and most airline carriers flying with those planes said they would temporarily pull them out of service.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has ordered United Airlines to step up inspection of the plane after one of its flights crashed at Denver International Airport on Saturday while parts of the hood were raining in suburban neighborhoods. None of the 231 passengers or ten crew members were injured, and the flight landed safely, authorities said. United is one of the carriers that grounded the aircraft.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson has identified the focus on the intensified inspections as hollow fan blades that are unique to the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine model and used exclusively on Boeing 777s. According to Dickson, the conclusion is based on an initial review of safety data and is likely to mean that some aircraft were grounded.
United Airlines flight 328 is being investigated.
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Boeing said there were 69 of the 777s with the Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines in service and another 59 in storage. The company confirmed that they should be grounded until the FAA imposes an inspection regime.
The emergency landing is the latest issue for Boeing, where its 737 Max aircraft were grounded for more than a year after two fatal crashes in 2019 and are suffering from the huge reduction in air travel due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Max planes began returning to the air late last year.
COLORADO MAN DESCRIBES ‘CLOSE CALL’ AS A LARGE PIECE OF FLIGHT 328 MISSING JUST HOME
The video posted on Saturday of Saturday’s emergency shows how the engine was completely engulfed in flames when the plane took off. Freezing frames of various videos taken by a passenger sitting slightly in front of the engine and also posted on Twitter apparently displayed a broken fan blade in the engine.
Passengers on their way to Honolulu said they were afraid the plane would crash after an explosion and flash of light, while people on the ground saw large pieces of the plane crash, missing only one house and smashing a truck. has. The explosion, visible from the ground, left a trail of black smoke in the air.
The NTSB said that two of the fan blades of the engine were broken and that the rest of the fan blades were ‘showing damage’. But it warned that it was too early to draw any conclusions about what had happened.
United says it will work closely with the FAA and the NTSB ‘to determine the additional steps needed to ensure these aircraft meet our stringent safety standards and can re-service.’
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The NTSB said the cabin voice recorder and flight data recorder were transported to its laboratory in Washington so that the data could be analyzed. NTSB investigations can take up to a year or more, although the agency usually releases some investigative material during the process.
Associated Press contributed to this report.