Incidents Moteurs présumés

Uncontained engine failure on 747 photos

Photos have emerged of an uncontained engine failure suffered by a Delta Airlines Boeing 747-400 last week en-route from Detroit to Tokyo’s Narita airport in Japan.

The engine failure, which occurred to N661US on Oct 23, took place as the Pratt & Whitney PW4056-powered aircraft was climbing through 5,000 ft.

The crew heard a large compressor stall and muffled explosion followed by the immediate rollback of engine number two. The engine fire light then illuminated and, with this still indicating at idle power setting, the crew activated the fire bottle

Having successfully extinguished the fire, the crew executed a text book fuel dump procedure after deciding against an over-weight landing. On return to Detroit post-flight inspections revealed severe damage to the engine and wing with large holes noted in the cowling as well as damage to slats, flaps and aileron.

As an indication of the violence of the failure, witnesses also say the engine was askew on the pylon. Investigations continue into the cause of the engine failure.

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Punctures in the engine casing indicate a high energy failure condition, possibly in the high-pressure compressor.

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Severe outlet guide vane and stator damage in the exhaust.
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Signs of scorching and puncture damage is evident in the accessorie

The incident aircraft is one of 16 repainted ex-Northwest 747s acquired by Delta.

Embattled Australian carrier Qantas Friday diverted one of its superjumbo A380 planes to Dubai after it developed an engine problem, a spokeswoman said.


Qantas flight 31 from Singapore to London was carrying 258 passengers, four pilots and 21 cabin crew when it was forced to change course. It landed in the United Arab Emirates early Friday.

"QF31 Singapore to London has diverted to Dubai this morning following an issue with the aircraft number four engine," the spokeswoman told AFP, adding there were no further details currently available.

"In line with standard operating procedures the engine was shut down and the aircraft is expected to land without further incident."

Qantas A380 diverted after Trent 900 engine oil problem

A Qantas Airways Airbus A380 on the Singapore-London route was forced to divert to Dubai after an oil-related problem caused a shutdown of its number four engine.

Ninety minutes after takeoff from Singapore, the crew of QF31 detected "an engine oil quantity defect" in one of the A380's Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines and shut it down, said Qantas.

The aircraft departed Changi airport at about 00:53 on 4 November, according to the airport's website.

It diverted to Dubai where it landed without further incident.

Qantas said the aircraft had 258 passengers and 25 crew aboard, all of whom disembarked safely.

Qantas was unable to provide the aircraft's registration number. It said engineers in Dubai are inspecting the aircraft.

This is not the first time Qantas has experienced oil-related issues with the Trent 900.

An oil leak in a Trent 900 engine was identified as the cause behind a partial power loss on a Qantas Airbus A380 this February.

The leak, which led to a gradual decrease in oil quantity in the number four engine, prompted the aircraft's flight crew to reduce the powerplant to idle thrust during a Singapore-London flight on 15 February. The aircraft, registration VH-OQC, did not experience a further oil level variation during the rest of the flight.

Inspections after the incident showed that there was an oil leak from an external high pressure/intermediate pressure (HP/IP) oil tube at its connection to the engine case, said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

In November 2010, a fault in a Trent 900 oil feed tube caused the number two engine of a Qantas A380 to suffer an uncontained failure, resulting in an emergency landing in Singapore.

The incident prompted Rolls-Royce to remove 53 Trent 900 engines from service.

On 18 May, the ATSB said the engines were removed because of concerns over the wall thickness of the engines' oil feed pipes.

Investigations into the uncontained engine failure have so far showed that it was caused by a manufacturing defect in an oil feed pipe, which caused a section of the pipe to thin and subsequently crack. The crack led to an oil leak and internal oil fire that weakened the engine's IP turbine disk, which separated from the turbine shaft and punctured the engine case and wing structure.

An engine fault forced a Qantas Airways A380 bound for London to divert to Dubai on Friday, exactly a year since a mid-air engine blowout prompted the Australian airline to ground its entire fleet of A380 superjumbos for nearly a month.

The Airbus aircraft had an "oil quantity defect" in one engine which was switched off according to standard procedure, a Qantas spokeswoman in Sydney said, adding Qantas engineers would investigate the problem.

The airline said in a letter distributed to passengers and posted on xxxxx by Fry that engineers would take a number of hours to conduct "mandatory inspections".

"Qantas... have said they shut down the engine to check oil and that there was no explosion," a source familiar with events said.

Referring to the latest incident and the engine explosion a year ago Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said: "The two issues are completely unrelated. This is a one-off and we will look to get the aircraft back in the skies as soon as possible."

Airbus spokesman Sean Lee said in an email to reporters: "We are aware that an A380 operated by Qantas diverted to Dubai as a precautionary measure. We are working with the airline to look into this matter."

A Rolls-Royce spokesman said the company was aware of the incident and was working closely with Qantas to provide appropriate support and technical assistance.

The latest incident follows a series of setbacks for Qantas, which is emerging from the grounding of its entire fleet over the weekend in a long-running and costly dispute.

The weekend shutdown stranded tens of thousands of passengers but succeeded in forcing the government and the nation's industrial tribunal to intervene and ban all further strikes at Qantas.
(Reuters)

Reports of eight in-flight and four on-ground unintended shutdowns of General Electric CF6-80C2B wide-body turbofan engines have prompted the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to mandate a change out of the engine's electronic control unit (ECU).

A proposed airworthiness directive, to be published on 14 November (Sevrien : 2011) , will affect 697 CF6 engines.....

.....flying on US-registered widebody aircraft.

The directive supersedes a 2007 AD requiring a software upgrade (8.2.Q1) on the same ECU to increase the engine's margin to flameout after several incidents where engines had flamed out due to exposure to ice crystals and ice shedding into the engine.

With the new software in place, problems continued.

Devrions-nous dire, comme Alan JOYCE de Qantas, quand il y a eu l'incident regrettable du RR Trent 900 sur l'A380 de Qantas, ..... 'Le logiciel n'a pu rien faire ; il doit y avoir un défaut fondamental ("fundamental flaw") dans les conception et "design" du moteur' ? :lol: :roll:

FAA said it received two reports of "ice crystal condition flameouts", which prompted GE to develop another software upgrade (8.2.R) for the ECU. The new software included "improved inclement weather capability, and enhanced fuel metering valve fault handling logic to reduce the risk of [in-flight shut down] caused by intermittent fuel metering valve feedback signals", said the FAA.

Since that time however, there have been 12 additional engine shutdowns, eight in flight and four on the ground, with engines using upgraded ECU software and other upgrades.

The problem was found to be caused by ignition system induced noise that created dual-channel faults in the ECU computer.

In response, the proposed AD mandates replacing the ECUs with a new unit developed by GE to "eliminate the potential for dual-channel [computer] faults due to ignition system noise".

If finalised as written, the AD will give operators between six months (or 450 engine flight cycles) and 60 months (or 4,500 engine flight cycles) to change out the ECUs, depending on ECU part number.

By Simon Hradecky, created Sunday, Nov 20th 2011 18:02Z, last updated Sunday, Nov 20th 2011 18:02Z

A Cathay Pacific Airbus A340-300, flight CX-903 from Hong Kong (China) to Manila (Philippines) with 234 passengers and 13 crew, was climbing out of Hong Kong when the crew shut an engine down due to a suspected failure.

The aircraft returned to Hong Kong for a safe landing about 2 hours after departure.

A replacement Airbus A330-300 registration B-LAI reached Manila with a delay of 4 hours.