Southwest Airlines plane diverted after engine blows apart

Hatu

Veteran
Aug 20, 2002
645
132
MIA

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Fortunately, the airplane is built to fly on only one engine if necessary.  We can all be grateful that it performed as expected, and that debris from the failure did not puncture the skin of the aircraft.  Kudos to the crew for getting it to the ground safely with no injuries to passengers or crew.
 
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It looks like the inlet cowl departed the engine. Also, you can see a panel on top of the canoe is unlatched and you can see 2 cowling latches (?) unlatched at about 11 and 1 o'clock in the blue area just forward of the canoe. You can also see the oil servicing panel unlatched and open on the right side of the cowl. It could be these panels open mechanically when an over pressure condition exists? But the cowling latches on top, I'm not so sure. A bit of speculation here.
 
I'm glad there were no injuries, but I think when NTSB gets done it will be an interesting report
 
Thanks for weighing in. I saw the open latches at 11 & 1 as well, but wasn't sure if they were left open, or if the force of the cowling being ripped off "pulled" them open (for lack of a better term).
 
It's why the packages of napkins are so large when loaded on the airplane.  Yes, the f/as will never need that many napkins to do the service, but you never know when you're going to need a whole bunch for a write-up.
 
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jimntx said:
It's why the packages of napkins are so large when loaded on the airplane.  Yes, the f/as will never need that many napkins to do the service, but you never know when you're going to need a whole bunch for a write-up.
 
How many napkins does it take to remove all those brown and yellow stains from the seats?
:LOL:
 
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This one is going to be very interesting. With the other access panels blown open maybe that points to an overpressure of some kind inside the cowls that also fractured the inlet cowl and blew it apart. 
 
Looks like the fuselage may have been penetrated where it was hit about 2 feet below the windows and also a big dent in the stabilizer leading edge. Lucky this one ended well. 
 
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UN-contained engine failures is a rarity in 1st world countries after the UA DC10 flt:232 in Sioux City crash.
JMHO, someone went cheap.
Glad someone didn't get hurt but this is not an unknown problem.
But then again, all of our 'lesson learned' engineers have been fired/replaced/retired and/or laid off and there isn't one anymore.
Oh well, time to reset the clock...
B) xUT
 
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