[ad_1]
The hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board and an NTSB report also revealed some frightening new details on the chaotic scene aboard Flight 1380, when the pilots heard a loud bang, the wind entered the cabin through the broken window and oxygen masks fallen from the ceiling.
The Boeing 737 was en route from New York to Dallas on April 17 when the engine broke down. NTSB investigators hope that the audience will help them identify the cause of the problem and prevent catastrophic events from happening again.
Engine builder CFM International told the audience that its CFM56-7B model had failed its first certification test in the mid-1990s but had finally passed a second certification test. Since then, engineers have made various design changes to prevent fan blade failures.
After the engines were put into service, "some of these old engines, when we examined the fan blades, indicated that the coating system was not intact, as we had anticipated with the change of design, "said Mark Habedank, engineer. leader of the CFM56 engine.
The company made a design change by installing a piece of metal called "wedge" and adding lubrication.
More recently, inspectors have discovered similar cracked blades in the same engine model installed on aircraft from other airlines, Habedank said.
After the 2016 failure, CFM asked the operators to perform additional inspections of the fan blades.
Southwest, whose entire fleet is made up of Boeing 737, said the fan blade broke down did not meet the requirements of an additional check.
"At the time of the event, we had already inspected 603 engines," said Mark Wibben, technical manager of the airline. However, he said: "We had no basis to prioritize these fan blades compared to other blades in our fleet."
The last engine maintenance work was completed in June 2017, the NTSB announced. It was manufactured in 1997 and revised in 2012.
CFM International is a joint venture of GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines.
In a statement sent Wednesday to CNN, GE Aviation said CFM was "reacting aggressively" after the 2016 incident and was working closely with the regulators to inspect some 350,000 fan blades in the CFM56 fleet. 7B. All fan blades were cleaned in mid-August 2018, the statement said.
Chaos in the cabin
The NTSB interviews reveal new details about the scary scene aboard the plane, which carried 144 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots.
The first indication of a problem was a loud bang at 11:03, about half an hour after the plane took off from LaGuardia Airport. The plane was flying at 32,000 feet when it sank to the left and the oxygen masks fell off the ceiling.
While cockpit alarms sounded, pilots encountered equipment problems that prevented them from communicating with flight attendants, air traffic controllers, firefighters and others while recovering from the steep turnaround. determining where they could land.
In the cockpit, the pilots worked to smooth the plane and started descending. But they told the investigators that while wearing their oxygen masks, they could not talk to each other.
After finding the right microphone switches, the pilots mistakenly believed that the plane was on fire and asked an air traffic controller to route them to the Philadelphia airport.
"We are single-engine downhill and we have a fire in number one," said one of the drivers, according to the NTSB report.
At that moment – 11 minutes after the shock – one of the pilots recalled the cabin to talk to the flight attendants. It was at this point that the flight crew was made aware of the situation in the cabin, including an injured passenger, according to the NTSB report.
The flight attendants were preparing to serve drinks when they heard the detonation.
An air hostess said that "because of the pressure in her ears, she could barely hear anything, the cabin was noisy and windy," according to the report.
The death of a passenger
A flight attendant discovered the heartbreaking scene in Row 14.
Riordan, sitting in a seat near the window near the wing, "was dragged out of the plane by the window," according to the report.
The flight attendant "grabbed the passenger and tried to get him back on the plane with the help of [another flight attendant]"Two male passengers helped and finally managed to get the passenger back on the plane, the report says.
A nearby nurse and another passenger performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Riordan when the aircraft landed. One of the flight attendants did not return to her seat in time to land, "so she sat at the bottom of the driveway, near rows 4 or 5 and the passengers kept it on the ground "when the plane landed in Philadelphia, according to the report.
Communication problems continued after the landing. One of the pilots described "difficulties in communicating with the fire trucks on the radio and stated that the captain had requested a discreet frequency". A pilot "finally shouted … to the fire chief from the front door," the report says.
Riordan's family thanked the NTSB "for its very important work" in a statement on Wednesday.
"The most important thing now is to ensure that the aircraft and engine failures that caused Jennifer's untimely and unnecessary death do not happen again," the statement said.
Source link
