Investigators were scouring Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Saturday after an engine caught fire on an American Airlines plane attempting to take off Friday, as a source said a detached engine part had hit a nearby building, something the design should have prevented. No serious injuries were reported in the incident, which crippled a Boeing 767 with 161 passengers and nine crew members aboard as it was departing for Miami and briefly closed all O’Hare’s runways. The failure was so intense that a disk from the engine hit a building roof. Jet engines are designed to keep parts within the outer cover as escaped shrapnel can tear through the cabin or rupture fuel tanks in the wings. Such “uncontained” failures therefore are extremely rare and NTSB officials were looking for clues as to whether the fault lay with the engine, with maintenance or a freak event such as debris on the runway entering the engine. The General Electric engine that powered the plane was a workhorse model known as the CF6 introduced decades ago, GE spokesman Rick Kennedy told Reuters on Saturday. The American Airlines plane dates from the 1980s or 1990s, and had been serviced by the airline, he said. Officials from GE Aviation, Boeing and American Airlines were on the scene at O’Hare assisting in the investigation, GE’s Kennedy said. The O’Hare incident marks the third uncontained GE engine failure in little over a year, following a British Airways Boeing 777 in September 2015 and a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 in August. Both aircraft used different engines, the GE90 and CMF56, made by a joint venture of GE and Safran of France.<br/>
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When Willie Walsh, CE of IAG, launched a E1.4b takeover of Aer Lingus last year, the rationale went well beyond securing the Irish carrier’s aircraft and routes. He saw the airline’s strong positions at Dublin and Shannon airports, which have spare capacity, as strong growth opportunities that were lacking at London Heathrow, the congested hub for his British Airways brand. But just over a year on from the acquisition, many of the assumptions underlying the deal have been upturned. European airlines’ growth prospects have been hit by a summer marred by terrorism, air traffic disruption and the economic uncertainty surrounding the UK’s Brexit vote. In addition, the UK government has just approved a new third runway at Heathrow, which Walsh had doubted would ever be built. Now, the question is how much these changes threaten the prosperity of a company that has, so far, negotiated turbulence in the sector better than Lufthansa and Air France-KLM. On Friday, IAG’s shares rose 6% when it announced a relatively muted 3.6% decline in Q3 operating profits. But Chris Tarry, a UK-based aviation consultant, says the group’s fortunes will depend both on its efficiency improvements and on how much buffeting it receives from economic factors such as the UK’s exit from the EU. “It’s not just about improving the businesses that are in the group,” Tarry says. “It’s one of what comes next to the group.”<br/>
The boss of British Airways’ parent company has said he has no confidence in the Heathrow management to build a third runway within budget. Willie Walsh, the CE of IAG, said Heathrow had been premature in celebrating government approval of the project and warned that it would be “a significant challenge” for the airport to deliver a runway while keeping charges flat, as stipulated by the government. “Do I have confidence that the current team at Heathrow can do it? No I don’t,” said Walsh. IAG, which includes the airlines Vueling, Aer Lingus and Iberia, is Heathrow’s biggest customer, operating about half of all flights at the west London airport. The government said the new runway had to be “delivered without hitting passengers in the pocket”, and the regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, wrote to the airport to confirm it expected Heathrow to keep the charges low. Walsh said Heathrow’s current plan could not be delivered without increasing charges. “Among other things, the airport will have to confirm that the [project] can be built without raising passenger charges. Can the proposal given by Heathrow to the airports commission be built and keep charges flat, no it can’t,” he said. The IAG boss added that a runway could be built by Heathrow if there was “some radical change in their [the management’s] behaviour and thinking”, but repeated: “I’m personally not confident they can do it.” <br/>
Australian carrier Qantas flagged Monday a hit to H1 earnings with falling international airfares offsetting a decline in fuel prices. The airline, which has turned itself around in recent years on the back of aggressive cost-cutting, said it expects underlying profit before tax to be A$800m-850m for the six months ending December 31. This compares to A$921m the same period a year ago. CE Alan Joyce said the interim forecast was based on revenue falling 3.2% in the three months to September 30 due to increased competition on international routes. “Like most carriers globally, we are seeing international airfares below where they were 12 months ago,” he said in a trading update. “But the impact of that is tempered by the competitive advantages we’ve been working hard to fortify including our strong domestic position and diversified loyalty business. “We remain disciplined on cost, continue to manage capacity carefully to match demand, and have secured the benefit of lower fuel prices through our hedging.” In the year to June 30, Qantas posted a record net annual profit of A$1.42b and announced its first payout to shareholders in seven years.<br/>