US and European regulators order inspections within 20 days after passenger killed by blowout

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

US and European airline regulators have ordered emergency inspections within 20 days of nearly 700 aircraft engines similar to the one involved in a fatal Southwest Airlines blowout earlier this week, citing risks of a similar mishap.



The directives from the US Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency indicated rising concerns since a similar failure in 2016 of the same type of engine – a CFM56-7B engine, made by CFM International.

The FAA said the engine on Southwest Airlines flight 1380 exploded on Tuesday when a fan blade broke off. The blast shattered a window, killing one woman, in the first US passenger airline fatality since 2009.



“The unsafe condition is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same design,” the FAA said in the order.



CFM, which is jointly owned by General Electric and France’s Safran, produces the CFM56 engine in factories in the US and Europe. About 14,000 CFM56-7B engines are in operation.



In August 2016 a Southwest flight made a safe emergency landing in Florida after a fan blade separated from the same type of engine and debris ripped a hole above the left wing.



Southwest passengers tried to save woman as pilot showed 'nerves of steel' Read more

Following that problem the European agency gave airlines nine months to check engines, while US regulators drafted an order giving airlines up to 18 months to carry out checks, but it had not finalised the measure by the time of Tuesday’s damage. The EASA had rejected a request by one airline to double the time allowed for checks to 18 months, saying the data did not justify it.

Airlines must now make ultrasonic inspections of fan blades that have been used in more than 30,000 cycles, or have been in service for about 20 years, within the next 20 days. A cycle includes one take-off and landing.

The order will affect about 680 engines globally, including about 350 in the US, the FAA said. The engine that blew apart on Tuesday had done 40,000 cycles, the company said.

Play Video 0:35 Southwest Airlines jet to air traffic control: 'There's a hole and someone went out' – audio

The CFM56 engine is used on about 1,800 Boeing 737 planes in service in the US and about 6,400 worldwide.

On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board chairman, Robert Sumwalt, the chief investigator of US aviation accidents, said he could not yet say if the incident pointed to a fleet-wide issue. The NTSB declined to comment on Friday.

Several major airline officials said the order would primarily affect airlines with higher use of aircraft covering shorter routes.

Southwest, which had opposed efforts by CFM last year to shorten the FAA’s proposed 18-month deadline, said on Friday that its maintenance programme met or exceeded the new requirements.

The European order states that after the first inspection, airlines must repeat the process every 3,000 cycles, which typically represents about two years in service. More than 150 have already been inspected.

Inspections recommended by the end of August will affect an additional 2,500 engines.