A Southwest Airlines flight landed safely in Philadelphia Tuesday after the jet violently depressurized when a piece of an engine flew into and broke a window, according to passenger accounts and the pilot’s conversations with air traffic control.
One passenger’s father-in-law, relaying information from his daughter, said the impact was so severe that a female passenger was partially sucked out of the plane when the window imploded.
Todd Baur told NBC10 the woman was partially “drawn out” of the plane before being “pulled back in by other passengers.”
The jet’s left engine blew shortly after takeoff, passengers said. Pieces of shrapnel flew into the plane’s fuselage and at least one window, the passengers and the FAA said.
“There is a hole in the side of the aircraft, also,” an aircraft controller relayed to firefighters at the airport.
Like something out of a disaster movie, but real…WTF?
I always wear mine, car or plane. Hell, we hit a big air pocket on my way back from Panama last time and one chick went flying up and out of her seat landing half into the walkway of the plane. No one was seriously hurt, but she was all freaked out as you’d expect.
I heard on Fox that this turbine blade failure/exploding engine business has happened before to Southwest, a few years ago. Holes in the plane, but no depressurization and no injuries.
I am really sorry to hear about this, and my thoughts are with the family that lost a loved one.
I have a lot of friends that work at Southwest. This is the first time they have ever had a fatality. Believe me, they are definitely taking this very seriously.
One photo I saw shows about half the fan section and it looks intact but the entire inlet cowl is missing. I haven’t seen any pictures of the rest of the engine or damage further back like a turbine section taking the day off. That had to be a very scary few minutes.
from the photos I have seen, it doesn’t look like the fan or the gearbox malfunctioned because it looked to be intact.
It appears the fan shroud blew apart. The shroud does a few things:(1) The duct is convergent hence the velocity of air also increases producing larger thrust.(2) The bypass airflow cools the main engine unlike a propeller aeroplane. (3) The air flow is also directed and merged with the flow through the main engine hence reducing the EGT/TGT considerably. (4) The shroud also reduces the chopping sound of the propeller and makes the engine quieter. (5) The lining of the shroud is perforated and takes exhaust heat to de-ice, or to prevent ice build up on the front housing.
Regardless, the air pressure inside of the shroud housing is usually pretty high, but not high enough to blow the shroud made of composites, aluminum and titanium completely apart. Unless there was water trapped in the housing and somehow the heat turned the water into steam and turned the fan housing into a pressure cooker bomb.
I don’t think wearing or not wearing a seatbelt played into this. Your upper torso could easily be sucked out that window even if you are belted in tight.
You know I’ve never had a good feeling about the trend where people bring “comfort pets” with them on planes.
I can only imagine how a medium sized dog would react and how people would react to the chaos caused by that combination of events.
Fatigue of some of the components of the fan shroud? It failed to contain the parts, and fan blades that seem to have exploded for some reason. Maybe a missing blade, or blades, and out of balance? It could have ingested something. Curious to see the NTSB report.