general

The engine that failed so catastrophically on a Boeing 737 plane operated by Southwest this week is not the only jet engine model with problems that have caught the eye of safety officials. Like the engine on the Southwest jet, two others — one used on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and another on some Boeing 767s — developed cracks. On Tuesday, the same day as the engine failure on the Southwest plane, the FAA said Boeing 787 Dreamliners powered by Rolls-Royce engines could no longer be flown on ultralong, over-water flights. The engines are produced by three different manufacturers, but the fact that all three have developed safety issues is prompting questions about the engines’ design, operation and their inspection procedures. The worry is that the flaws are part of a trend as manufacturers push to develop ever more powerful and complex machines. “We’ve gotten smarter,” said Richard Giannotti, an aerospace engineer. “We can design things to a very low margin with a lot of reliability data to back it up. But when we get to the ragged edge, it doesn’t take much for things to go wrong.”<br/>He said that in the past, engines were designed with an abundance of precaution. “They don’t do that anymore. They’re trying to whittle down every last bit of material, every bit of weight. Thrust is king.” But, Giannotti said, “there is such a thing as pushing things. We try to get right to the edge, with as little edge as possible, without stepping over." In the case of the Southwest engine failure this week, investigators say they are not only considering why a fan blade broke but why the engine housing failed to contain it. <br/>

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it will order inspections of at least 220 aircraft engines as investigators are focusing on a broken fan blade in an engine that exploded Tuesday on a Southwest flight, killing a passenger. The regulator said late Wednesday it plans to finalise the air-worthiness directive within the next two weeks. The order, which it initially proposed in August following an engine failure in 2016 on another Southwest flight, will require ultrasonic inspection within the next six months of fan blades on all CFM56-7B engines that have accrued a certain number of takeoffs, while others will need inspections within 18 months. Airlines said that because fan blades may have been repaired and moved to other engines, the order would affect far more than 220 of the CFM56-7Bs, which are made by a partnership of France’s Safran and General Electric. An FAA official acknowledged the total number covered may be higher. Some critics have questioned why the FAA did not move faster, when European regulators issued an April 2 directive ordering similar CFM56-7B inspections within nine months.<br/>

Flights from Berlin's Tegel airport can go ahead as planned on Friday while a World War Two bomb is defused in the German capital, airport authorities said on Thursday. The 500-kilogram British bomb was found during construction work near the city's central train station. All buildings within an 800-metre radius will be evacuated from 9 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on Friday, police said. "Good news: The originally coordinated Tegel flight plan for tomorrow can take place as planned," the airport operator told passengers via Twitter. Air traffic controllers and the airport had agreed a procedure to make flights possible. Planes coming in to land at Tegel, which is about 7 km from the central station, would need to avoid flying over the site where disposal work was being carried out. But the DFS air traffic control authority said usual take-off and landing routes should not be affected. The DFS spokeswoman said airlines may need to fly with greater separation between planes than usual during that time.<br/>

American air carriers in general are so safe that ranking them in terms of safety is difficult. Tuesday’s accident was the first fatality Southwest had experienced in its 47 years of operation. It was the first death on a US-registered carrier in nine years. In fact, airlines have become so safe that many experts say ranking them by safety is problematic. “The real thing to look at is how rare an event is,” said Manoj Patankar, head of the school of aviation and transportation technology at Purdue University. “In this case, it’s extremely, extremely rare,” he said. The last time there was an uncontained engine failure in a US plane was in Sioux City, Iowa in 1989. That accident killed 111 of the plane’s 296 passengers. “There are almost 29,000 commercial flights a day in the United States. This is the first person that’s died in an accident (in the United States) in nine years. Put that in the context of automobile accidents and think about how safe it is,” said Michael Rioux, COO for JDA Aviation Technology Solutions, a flight safety consulting firm. That said, there are global airline safety lists. The danger now is that of complacency, believes Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot renowned for safely landing a US Airways jet on the Hudson River off Manhattan in 2009. Today, air travel has become so safe "we can no longer define safety as the absence of accidents," said Sullenberger, now retired from flying and a safety expert and speaker. Sullenberger is concerned that as airlines have become more consolidated and globalized, and inherently more cost-competitive, even good major airlines have reduced their training towards regulatory minimums and away from the higher standards. The danger is that with intense cost-competitiveness, there might be a drift towards expediency, a tendency to do what’s cheapest or easiest, not what’s best. <br/>

Rockets hit Libya’s main airport and damaged a plane as it was waiting to take off early on Thursday, a security force said, underscoring fragile security. One rocket hit an Airbus 320 of state-run Libyan Airlines, and others struck the arrivals hall at Tripoli’s Mitiga airport at around 2 a.m.(0000 GMT), but no one was injured, a spokesman for the Special Deterrence Force said. Photos circulating on social media showed a tear in the tarmac and holes in the wing and body of the plane. Airlines have struggled to maintain services and keep the oil-producing country connected to the outside world as attacks damage their planes.<br/>

Airlines are improving their baggage management practices, with the rate of mishandled bags falling by 70.5% over the last decade to a record low as technology allows for better tracking, according to a report released on Thursday. Delayed, damaged and lost bags cost airlines an estimated $2.3b in compensation, transport and other imposts last year, the report from Swiss aviation technology group SITA shows, down 46% from a decade ago. "In every service industry 'the mistake' is very expensive," SITA CEO Barbara Dalibard said. "If you reduce drastically the number of events of this kind you make huge savings. It also reduces anxiety for the passengers." In 2017, 5.57 bags were mishandled for every 1,000 passengers, a record low. That added up to 22.7m bags globally. To help cut down on mishandled bags, IATA members have agreed to keep track of each bag at specific points in the journey from this June. The carriers will have to share that information with all involved in delivering those bags back to passengers at their final destination. "While we won't see a sudden change in 2018, it is a real turning point for the industry as airlines begin to unlock the value of the tracking data for the 4.65 billion bags they carry," Dalibard said.<br/>

Mitsubishi Aircraft will conduct demonstration flights of its MRJ regional jet at the Farnborough Air Show in July, the company said, reiterating first delivery is on track for mid-2020. Manufacturing of parts for the first MRJs that will be given a new avionics configuration is almost complete, company President Hisakazu Mizutani said in remarks sent to ATW’s sister publication Aviation Daily. Repositioning avionics was one cause of a two-year development delay announced in January 2017. The other was shifting electrical wiring. “The redesign of the electrical wire harnesses is well underway and manufacturing is planned, incorporating a phased approach,” the company said, quoting Mizutani. The flight demonstrations at Farnborough will be a first for the MRJ, although the aircraft has been in flight testing since 2015. The first MRJ delivery to launch customer ANA is on track for mid-2020.<br/>