Tuesday, November 07, 2006



A Boeing 777 loses a stove just after take-off at Sweden's Stockholm Arlanda airport a couple of days ago.

Click on the pic for the bigger version - you can see engine pieces falling out the back.

It climbed to 8,000 feet and dumped 120,000 lbs of fuel before returning for landing. At the price we pay for fuel, that's about $70,000 worth of gas.

The 777 has been plagued with engine problems and failures, which appear to relate to the Rolls-Royce Trent engine degrading faster than expected over time.

My Citation II uses Pratt and Whitney engines :)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Had it been British Airways they would have just kept on going and fixed it at destination.

Anonymous said...

that isn't really fair jim, but funny nonetheless.

I guess you can't get anything by the spotters. Talk about timing.

I think the scariest was the failure that happened during maintenance runup on number 1 and took out number 2 with a gigantic chunk of turbine disk. The speculation was that it only happened because the disk bounced off the tarmac into number 2, but what if that happened after V1 on a limiting runway? Bad news.

LOL, one of my first airplane memories is asking the FA on a Delta flight when I was about 10 why there was oil streaking down the side of the cowling on the 737 JT8D outside my window. She came back and said the captain said it was normal, which it sure was.

A few years after that I was sitting on a Delta -200 at the gate when the captain made a PA that we'd be delayed while they got an A&P to check on the fuel leaking out the bottom of the number one engine cowling. After an hour or so delay the captain came on the PA to say they hadn't found a mechanic, but they were going to start it up and see if it sealed itself. Me and my teenage buddy thought this was hilarious, and loudly joked that there was a whole bunch of jet fuel and kitty litter sitting underneath a wing full of fuel still leaking and about to start an engine that the captain thought was unsafe to start an hour ago when there was a whole lot less fuel puddled under it. A couple guys thought it was hilarious, some of the crowd was decidedly unamused. The delay almost made us miss the only connecting flight that day, and Delta not wanting unaccompanied minors hanging around Atlanta shoved us into a Crown Vic with some woman to take a very entertaining ride across the ramp directly to our gate. Good times for sure.

Anonymous said...

The failure was not the Rolls Royce engine. It was the Boeing made duct.
If you post pictures from a.net you should take a look in the forums to see if there is anymore info on it.

Sulako said...

More details have emerged about the incident from maintenance workers at Arlanda. Flight understands that the inner wall of the Rolls-Royce Trent 800's D Duct wall disintegrated on rotation, leading to glass fibre debris being exited from the engine.

The fan air stream pushed the exhaust nozzle into the core exit and the engine surged. The crew pulled controls back to idle, but had no cockpit indications, it is understood. After dumping 60t of fuel, the engine was left running at idle until the 777 landed.

R-R has had reliability issues with the Trent 800 engines before, notably in 2002 when Emirates complained formally about the onwing time of the engine on the Dubai carrier's 777 fleet. The manufacturer shipped a two-stage upgrade package that year to tackle faster than expected performance deterioration on Trent 800s operating in hot and heavy conditions.

The US Federal Aviation Administration imposed an airworthiness directive on the Trent 800 in January reducing maintenance cycle times to "prevent possible multiple uncontained low pressure compressor fan blade failure, due to cracking in the blade root caused by increased stresses in the shear key slots."

Maintenance crews report that the engine only suffered impact damage on the exhaust nozzle, a firewire and a oil scavenge pipe. Additionally the left flaperon also suffered impact damage and is being changed.

Initial inspections teams from by Boeing Seattle and from R-R have concluded that blade delamination on the core of the reverser was the probable cause, a source within the maintenance provider has told Flight. No engine defect or operational issue was found by preliminary inspections.
-------------------------------



NEW YORK


A jetliner carrying more than 250 people lost power in one of its two engines Wednesday but landed safely at a nearby airport, officials said.

The Boeing 777 plane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport less than a half hour after the engine failed, said American Airlines spokesman Billy Sanez. Officials were investigating what caused the problem on Flight 134.

"The plane landed after the captain declared an emergency," Sanez said. "It's not a common incident, but the pilots are trained to deal with these situations."

The plane was en route to London from Los Angeles. Sanez said all the passengers would be put on another plane.

also this...

Date: 30 JAN 2001
Type: Boeing 777-31H

Flight 069 aborted its take-off run on runway 16 at low speed as a result of a failure within the left (No.1) engine. Although the failure was associated with a large compressor surge within the engine, no subsequent fire developed and the aircraft was able to safely return to the terminal building on its remaining serviceable engine. Failure of the Rolls Royce RB211 Trent 892 engine was a result of the release of a single blade from the low-pressure compressor (fan) rotor disk. The blade release caused extensive damage to the remainder of the fan and the intake shroud, however the event was fully contained. The only escape of debris from the engine was small, low energy fragments, causing minor damage to the fuselage and the opposite engine.

and this one..

DATE/SITE: 22 Nov. Paris - Rio de Janeiro
AIRCRAFT & REGN: 777-228ER of Air France. Flt: AF442
CIRCUMSTANCES: F-GSPE landed Fortaleeza Brazil after heavy vibration in #1
(GE90-90B).
DEATH & INJURY: Nil
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS2 Imagery at http://www.iasa.com.au/081203.htm:
ETOPS 2.5hr transit (after 6hrs in cruise). Inlet guide vanes damaged.


and this one...

AIRLINE: Japan AL TYPE: Boeing 777- REGISTRATION: - C/N: - AGE: -
OPERATION: DSP FLIGHT No.: JL 1922 FROM: Naha TO: Tokyo-HND VIA: -
OCCUPANTS: PAX: 355 CREW: x
FATALITIES: PAX: 0 CREW: 0 OTHER: 1
INJURIES: PAX: 0 CREW: 0 OTHER: 0
DAMAGE TO AIRCRAFT: minor
12 minutes after take-off from Naha, the hydraulic quantity in engine #2 dropped to almost zero forcing the pilots to shut down the engine. Subsequently, a safe single engine landing at Naha was made.

On September 18 at approximately 0420 UTC, a Malaysian Airline Systems B-777-200, registration 9M-MRM, experienced a shutdown of the right engine while about 40 miles northwest of Brisbane, Queensland, in Australia. The engine was restarted and the airplane returned to Brisbane. The incident is being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.


On March 11, 2005, American Airlines flight 908, a Boeing B777, N790AN, experienced a right engine fire and aborted the takeoff at about 110 knots at Ezeiza International Airport (EZE), Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 14 crew and 195 passengers performed an emergency evacuation. The incident is being investigated by the Junta de Investigaciones de Accidentes de AviaciĆ³n Civil (JIAAC), Republic of Argentina.

Anonymous said...

Not sure why you are concentrating on RR, other engine manufacturers have problems as well.

For example, ethiad recently had its ETOPs cert revoked for an inspection failure on a GE90.

Also, you didnt mention that the D duct is made by Boeing not RR.

You dont have a user name on a.net of BOE773 do you?

Anonymous said...

I just experienced this very problem on an American Airlines Boeing 777 out of Delhi, India, on Sunday, December 17, 2006. We made an emergency landing after the event, which included five distinct flashes of light and sparks out of the left engine. It occurred during takeoff, after we passed the point of no return. It was an absolutely frightful experience.