Author: Jack Stewart / Source: WIRED
The National Transportation Safety Board will likely take more than a year to determine what caused the catastrophic failure of an engine on Southwest Flight 1380, rupturing the cabin and killing a passenger. No surprise, then, that nobody’s waiting for the final verdict to try to stop it from happening again.
The NTSB says the engine failed after one of the blades that make up the fan at the front of the CMF56-7B engine sheared off, at 32,500 feet. Investigators found signs of metal fatigue in the blade’s stumpy remains. Here, “fatigue” essentially means weakening—a possible result of subjecting metal alloys to the extreme temperatures and heavy loads that come with every flight. The regular expansion and contraction of the metal can exaggerate the smallest defects, like micro fractures, to the point where they become dangerous.
So the CMF56-7B, made by CFM International (a joint venture between Safran and General Electric) and bolted to 6,700 planes around the world, is getting a lot of extra attention. Southwest crews will spend the next 30 days inspecting hundreds of its CFM engines, according to Reuters. And the Federal Aviation Administration says it will issue an airworthiness directive within the next two weeks, requiring all airlines run an ultrasonic inspection of all 24 fan blades on every CFM56-7B they use, after it has been through a certain number of takeoff and landing cycles.
The ultrasonic bit is important, since the fatigue on the blown engine was on the interior of the snapped blade, according to the NTSB, where…
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