Southwest Airlines is accelerating its inspection of aircraft engines like the one whose mid-flight failure on Tuesday propelled shrapnel through a passenger jet’s window, leaving a woman dead.
The left engine on Flight 1380, which was carrying 144 passengers and five crew members, malfunctioned about 20 minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City, said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt.
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The crew of the Boeing 737-700, bound for Dallas, initially reported an engine fire, though they clarified to air traffic controllers before an emergency landing in Philadelphia that, while parts of an engine were missing, there were no flames, Sumwalt said in a news briefing. One of the power plant’s 24 fan blades was missing, he said, and part of the engine’s exterior cowling, or protective covering, was found about 70 miles from Philadelphia.
The failure of the model 56-7B engine, built by CFM International, is the design’s second on a Boeing 737 operated by Southwest in two years. The earlier incident occurred on Southwest Flight 3472, which made an emergency landing in Pensacola, Fla. in 2016 and led
Part of the left engine of that plane, also a Boeing 737-800, and a fan blade separated during flight, the NTSB found, but the passenger compartment wasn’t penetrated.
Southwest said it’s speeding up ultrasonic checks for metal fatigue on fan blades on all CFM56 engines “out of an abundance of caution” and expects to complete the tests during the next month.
Preliminary examinations of the engine that failed Tuesday showed evidence of metal fatigue where the fan blade detached, Sumwalt said. Both CFM, a joint venture of General Electric and Safran SA, and Boeing have dispatched technical teams to assist the NTSB in its work.
“We are taking this event extremely seriously,” Sumwalt added. “This should not happen, and we want to find out why it happened so we can make sure preventive measures are put in place.”
The death of the passenger, identified by her family as Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old Wells Fargo executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, is a tragedy, said Southwest CEO Gary Kelly.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always an uncompromising priority,” he said.
Riordan was an active volunteer, serving on a number of community boards, according to a United Way biography.
Her “vibrancy, passion and love infused our community and reached across our country,” the Riordan family said in statement shared with Albuquerque TV station KOB4. “Her impact on everything and everyone she touched can never be fully measured.”
