Team-BHP - Airbus A320neo: Pratt & Whitney engine issues

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha1 (Post 4388415)

....
"There's a ring around the engine that is meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens," said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. "In this case it didn't. That's going to be a big focal point for the NTSB - why didn't (the ring) do its job?"

Containment is not guaranteed always. The amount of kinetic energy a fan casing/ring can absorb has a design limitation, Else casing will be too heavy (simply over design). The kinetic energy largely depends on the size of the broken/separated fan blade and fan's speed. It can also happen that the broken blade may hit the next blade before hitting the casing/ring, which will further complicate.

Fan blade out tests are ideally performed for 1/3 rd of blade fragment (this will be certainly contained).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zappo (Post 4388470)

I don't know if this can be relegated to being a mere coincidence on a larger scale of data but a curious thing that I see in many such extreme cases of civilian flights is that whenever such a flight manages to safely negotiate these dangerous circumstances and lands safely more often than not it has a forces veteran flying the plane!

Right from the days of the Gimli Glider incidence to the one that landed in the river Hudson or this case... examples are many!

A lot of former USA Airforce and Navy pilots end up flying commercial. The USA is pretty unique in how many of their commercial pilots have a military background. Even so, the vast majority of commercial pilots come from a civil background

Whether these few cases are statistically significant is a different matter. For every accident handled competently by an ex-military pilot I can quote a hundred ones handled competently by pilots without military training.

There is endless debate whether military pilots make or don’t make better commercial pilots than those with civilian backgrounds. Lots of theoretical pro’s and cons, but I don’t think anybody has been able to prove it one way or the other.

These sort of incidents are very, very rare. The media and the Internet likes to portray being an outstanding pilot on how such an incident is handled. Truth is that being an outstanding pilot requires very different skills as well. Dealing with emergencies is of course important, but actually statistically not that significant. Being a safe pilot is not about having outstanding stick and rudder skills. Check the accident reports and look for the root causes in accident and incidents. It’s rare to be contributed to lack of rudder and stick skills. But in case of a real emergency they come in very handy!! No doubt, no argument.

I am not sure how difficult this landing really was. Landing on one engine is something that any pilot with a twin engine rating can pull off. It is a job requirement. You wouldn’t be in the cockpit unless you have been able to demonstrate that repeatedly.

From what I have seen/read they had some major engine alarms, quickly lost the cabin pressure, secured the affected engine, descended and made a normal one engine out landing.

I don’t want to belittle this, but it is what all pilots are (or should be) capable off. That is their job. It does take a lot of skills, competence and experience. Not many people are capable of being a pilot, being able to work accurately under such pressure. But that’s what makes them pilots.

Jeroen

In USA, particularly, a large percentage of commercial pilots are ex-armed forces and USA is about 40 to 50% of world aviation (commercial, military, general). So this impression can get formed. But it is not that they are better or worse equipped to deal with disaster. In fact a military pilot transitioning to the commercial world has to unlearn a lot. In military flying, which is very different from civil, the military pilots are more often than not geared for a lot of unusual surprises.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zappo (Post 4388470)

... such extreme cases of civilian flights is that whenever such a flight manages to safely negotiate these dangerous circumstances and lands safely more often than not it has a forces veteran flying the plane!

Right from the days of the Gimli Glider incidence to the one that landed in the river Hudson or this case... examples are many!

Quote:

Originally Posted by V.Narayan (Post 4388487)

In USA, particularly, a large percentage of commercial pilots are ex-armed forces and USA is about 40 to 50% of world aviation (commercial, military, general). .

Just to add further. In the early 2000 close to 40% of US American pilots had a military background. It was partly a affect from the various (cold) wars. People joined the airforce during ww2, Korea, Vietnam, Cold war. Vast number of military pilots. That number has come down considerable due to two reasons:

Commercial aviation has rapidly expanded, lots more cockpit seat to go around.
Military pilot number have come down rapidly as well since the end of the cold war Today the US airforce has some 18.000 active pilots or thereabouts.

So the pool of military pilots is quickly drying up. Mind you apparently they are 3-4000 pilots short, but even then commercial aviation is still expanding.

Jeroen

Just came across this fifteen minute video.

He is a well known aviation expert and a real 737 pilot, ex military pilot too.

He explains a few things on jet engines in general and the failure what is likely to have occurred here. It is, according to him, not an uncontained engine failure.

It wasn’t the blade that caused the damage to the fuselage and window. Due to the blade coming off, the engine becomes violently unbalanced. Other pieces such as the cowling are likely to have come and being thrown around.

He also shows various test on jet engines where they blow off a blade to simulate this very incident. You see the blade being sucked in, but the vibration and the violence of the whole blade separation is quite amazing.

https://youtu.be/SKLcOgvgCcU

And the recording between the cockpit and ATC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnSizWZVyD4

Jeroen

Quote:

Originally Posted by A350XWB (Post 4388808)

There were two uncontained engine failure incidents on A380. ]

Some more technical details on both these incidents:

http://avherald.com/h?article=43309c6d/0032&opt=0

http://avherald.com/h?article=4af15205&opt=0

The Quantas incident is quite different from most other uncontained failures. It all started as an oil feeder pipe cracked, spewing oil in the space near the High and Intermediate Pressure turbine. The oil ignited and the subsequent ensuing heat made it separate from its drive. Upon separation it accelerated way beyond it’s rotational design speed and came apart.

Most of the other incident have a blade just coming off.

Jeroen

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/b...?smid=fb-share

"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.”

Excerpted from the article mentioned above. About a decade ago we were visiting GE's plant at Lynn and having discussions about the engine design. This is exactly what we felt, but then we were guys from third world and trained on dated Russian systems. And I remember coming back absolutely impressed and thought I had seen the future.

Nevertheless having been acquainted with their systems a little bit, I think resolution should be round the corner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A350XWB (Post 4387933)

The DGCA directive have asked to ground airplanes fitted with PW1100 engines beyond ESN 450. So, airplanes with engine serial numbers below this are not affected by the directive.
(News Article 1, News Article 2)

Thanks for your reply. I traveled on VT-IVC last Wednesday and the engine was quite smooth. The Buzz saw sound which usually comes on full power on the previous IAE engines was not present which made it even smoother.

Now, here is another strange thing.

The Indigo flight VT-ITO seemingly had an engine issue back on Jan 29th 2018 but seems to be flying now.

Current status: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/vt-ito

Issue Report: http://avherald.com/h?article=4b44392a

Has Indigo really grounded aircrafts ? I am all the more confused.

Can experts please comment ?

Another A320 Neo, same P&W:
Incident: GoAir A20N at Bangalore on Sep 1st 2018, engine shut down in flight

Quote:

A GoAir Airbus A320-200N, registration VT-WGJ performing flight G8-283 from Bangalore to Pune (India) with 169 people on board, was climbing out of Bangalore's runway 27 when the crew stopped the climb at about FL130 due to the failure of the left hand engine (PW1127) following vibrations and an magnetic chip detector indication. The crew shut the engine down and returned to Bangalore for a safe landing on runway 27 about 20 minutes after departure.

A replacement A320-200 registration VT-WAG reached Pune with a delay of 2.5 hours.

India's DGCA have opened an investigation

In another news, one of the engine from Indigo A320 Neo plane stalls mid-air.

Quote:

An IndiGo plane flying from Lucknow to Jaipur had to turn back to the airport today after one of its two engines stalled, news agency ANI reported.
The pilot of IndiGo flight 6E-451 saw high vibration in the engine after it stalled 40 minutes into the flight, following which he decided to turn back to Lucknow, ANI reported.
The aircraft is being inspected at the airport, it said.

Link to the news: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/indi...ome-topstories

Probably fitting then that DGCA has barred carriers from plying A320neos with P&W engines to Andaman. Considering the significant distance that a plane would fly over the ocean from mainland India to Port Blair, this is a sensible directive.

Quote:

Even as two top airlines in India - IndiGo and Go Air - continued to risk the lives of flyers by using accident-prone Airbus A320 Neo engines in their aircrafts, the Qatar Airways rejected the delivery A320 Neos citing ‘engine failure’. Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar-Al Baker, told Times Now that the decision was taken to ‘avoid grief in the future’.

In a significant development, on Thursday evening, shortly after the report on the A320 Neo engines was aired on Times Now, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that it had barred IndiGo and GoAir airlines from operating A320neos aircraft with Pratt & Whitney engines to Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar. The DGCA’s decision comes after an Airbus 320 New had suffered a technical glitch in the engine.

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/a...gca-ban/349477