When a jetliner's engine explodes moments before take off, people ask questions. Now, less than a week after that very thing happened to a British Airways 777, answers are starting to emerge—and they're scary.
Turns out the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned both Boeing and General Electric, the 777's engine-maker, about a flaw in the plane's engine design that could result in the very catastrophe that took place last week at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
What's worse is that the safety warning was issued over four years ago. Then again, Boeing doesn't have a super great track record when it comes to using defective parts on planes full of people.
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U.S. technology and engineering conglomerate GE said on Saturday it had signed $15 billion of business deals with Saudi Arabia as part of the kingdom's drive to diversify its economy beyond oil.
It came as dozens of senior U.S. business executives met Saudi counterparts at a conference coinciding with the visit of President Donald Trump to Riyadh.
[...] Among the projects, GE will help make Saudi power generation more efficient and provide digital technology to the operations of oil firm Saudi Aramco, aiming to create $4 billion of annual productivity improvements at Aramco. It will cooperate in medical research and training.
Source: Reuters
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(Score: 4, Touché) by fadrian on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:08PM
Something tells me that criminal negligence might be involved, given the time period elapsed.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by davester666 on Tuesday September 15 2015, @07:07PM
Yes. Somewhere, there is a single employee who is 100% responsible for this issue. They will be making less than $100K a year.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday September 15 2015, @07:34PM
Read the AD, boils down to we donno why it happens so inspect every 6000 hours. Four years ago is 35000 hours ago, figure the plane is in flight half the time (you actually need to keep a plane in the air more than that to make any money) so figure it was inspected maybe three to five times either with no cracks found OR they pencil whipped the inspection (We magnafluxed this four times and nothing is ever found? Surely it can't break now, lets skip the fifth inspection...)
Its a typical cascade failure. Engines are supposed to be inspected for this exact problem every made up 6000 hours. Maybe they actually fail every 5000 hours and nobody understands that. Maybe they Fed up the most recent inspection. Engines are supposed to be pretty tough (ingest birds and stuff while in flight) so someone had an engineering failure where this unit cracked once, on one plane, and no one knows why so they'll watch for it and gather data (of course the most recent failure could be totally off topic...). Air frame is supposed to be pretty tough and tolerate the occasional engine failure here and there. Well, frankly, it looks all scorched and trashed, but yeah, thats exactly what it did, not bad, could have been better.
Technically the airframe engineers got it closest to correct. So the engine is floored at takeoff and the plane's experiencing the usual weird stresses of takeoff and it got trashed but it wasn't a total fail. This is like people complaining about modern cars "tin can crushing" to adsorb the forces of a crash so the occupants walk away and then bitch about how cheap cars crumple up. So ... worst case scenario, and everyone on the plane didn't die, not bad for the airframe engineers, not bad. Would have been "nice" to be better armored, would have been nice to be tough enough to just bolt a new engine on and fly outta there in a couple hours like an old B-17, but ...
Hard to say what the engine engineers could have done better. The general public thinks there is one bug, just like MS Windows only has "one bug". Reality is they probably have a rather full plate ranging from real problems to total BS, given an infinite amount of money they could trace down every single BS failure, but I don' t think the bean counters are amused. In retrospect the public will be very pissed off about bug #2352 being really scary so they should have paid more attention but the general public needs to grow up, because the engineers were spending all their time on bug #8139 which would have killed everyone had they not fixed it, or whatever.
For the mechanics its hard to say with magnaflux. Its a messy PITA and quite possibly someone F'ed up. This is also assuming the crack was big enough to be detected at the last inspection (magnaflux is not magic, you know) This is assuming the crack and the AD have anything to do with the accident other than applying to an engine that coincidentally exploded years later after multiple inspections. Could have been ISIS with a 50 cal, who knows at this point.
Knowing that part is the weakest part of the design it would be funny if the engine control unit had a software crash and the turbine ran away and being the weakpoint of the design, thats where it failed, duh, although the actual "real" problem would have been running at twice the RPM the turbine was designed for. If it hadn't popped at that location, some other part would have exploded a fraction of a second later at a microscopically higher engine RPM so "eh". Its a little early to tell. Or some similar fail (lost lubrication pressure, who knows)
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday September 15 2015, @10:19PM
Read the AD, boils down to we donno why it happens so inspect every 6000 hours. Four years ago is 35000 hours ago, figure the plane is in flight half the time (you actually need to keep a plane in the air more than that to make any money) so figure it was inspected maybe three to five times either with no cracks found OR they pencil whipped the inspection (We magnafluxed this four times and nothing is ever found? Surely it can't break now, lets skip the fifth inspection...)
So if Boeing did pass on the every 6000 hours directive, they've done their part. Why does this story (and more-so the Summary: Thanks for that AnonTechie) blame Boeing when they should be taking General Electric to task?
Further the article includes, but chooses to ignore this gem:
The engine that failed on the British Airways 777, GE stated, was an earlier version with a different configuration that did not include the weld joint that was the subject of the FAA warning.
If GE's statement is true, the article's hole premise is WRONG! As is VLM's suggestion of lax inspections.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:11PM
Let the market take care of it. See, there's 159 people that probably won't fly with them again. See, the system works. You don't need this regulatory crap.
(Score: 5, Funny) by penguinoid on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:50PM
It's not the first time someone's been burned over skimping on safety. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I hope someone is fired for this, or at least grounded -- this shit can't fly.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:29PM
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday September 15 2015, @08:05PM
That's the mantra maintainers follow.
If the Airworthiness Directive says to inspect periodically, but if Boeing were to say "change out the engine", the airline would have to change the engine.
Boeing bears responsibility for what they tell customers.
The people I know inside Boeing who've been there for decades say they no longer recognize the company.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @09:10PM
Yeah, I know a 30+ year engineer at Boeing and he's pretty fed up with the place at this point. He spends most of his time telling product managers why the specs they've brought him are either insufficient to design a part, or will result in a non-viable design. Once in a while he actually gets to design something. The thing is they keep coming to him, so he must be right. A couple year ago he had to reverse engineer a part that he designed 20 years prior -- but no one could find the drawings anymore. That seems like a kick-in the nuts me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday September 15 2015, @10:26PM
Bullshit.
Go read the article. This Engine wasn't even subject to the Air Worthiness directive mentioned.
Did the entine fail? Yes.
Did the FAA predict it would fail, NO.
Any random bird, sucked in rock from the runway, tool or bolt left inside from the last inspection can destroy a compressor section.
But nothing in this Air Worthiness directive pertained to this engine.
The story was written before the facts were in, and even when the author went back an inserted the facts provided by GE, he failed to realize that his whole story became bogus.
You need to refocus your hate, and maybe learn to RTFA.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 16 2015, @10:48AM
YMBNH
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 16 2015, @12:34PM
Like Ford, and other equipment manufacturers, they've got a formula. As long as predicted_cost(problems happening) <= preicted_cost(fixing problems), problems with continue to happen.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:30PM
An airworthiness directive (AD) specifies the corrective action which needs to be taken. In the cited directive, it was additional, periodic inspections of the relevant engine parts. The article does not seem to actually dispute the claim from British Airways that they follow all ADs. The manufacterer (GE) further claims that this directive was for a different engine part.
If the AD was truly not followed, and was relevant for this aircraft, then the aircraft was not allowed to fly. The investigation will surely find out if that happened.
Congratulations to the pilot for safely aborting the takeoff.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 15 2015, @06:10PM
Turbines are really cool, and high tech, but they do come apart. They seldom give any warning. In every human endeavor, skill and training are invaluable. But, luck plays a part too. We might say that we've been lucky not to have this happen more frequently. Nothing is "failsafe". Hell, nothing can even be made idiot proof - we keep producing better idiots.
Luck.
As the story makes obvious, had that failure happened a minute or two later, it would have been a major catastrophe. In which case, everyone in the country would be trying to figure out if someone with a turban had been riding that plane.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 15 2015, @07:16PM
Hardware design and inspection processes are designed to change it from luck to physics. Sounds like in this case the airline figured it was okay leaving it as luck and lost.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by choose another one on Tuesday September 15 2015, @08:44PM
Not obvious at all. Uncontained engine failure on the ground means the aircraft gets hit by more high velocity shrapnel - because some bits that initially go downwards rebound back off the ground. Secondly a lot of the burning (or not) fuel would have fallen away from the aircraft rather than pooling underneath it (no evidence of a fuel tank breach like concorde), so the fire damage would probably be less. If the fire was still burning by the time it turned round to then fire crews would be there on landing and it would be out even faster, possibly before the evacuation - so fewer smoke injuries.
The A380 turbine disc failure (QF32) is a reasonable comparison for if this had happened airborne - less fire damage, and economically repairable. This 777 is very probably a hull loss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2015, @10:56AM
Those falling things must fall somewhere though, don't they?
(Score: 4, Informative) by mendax on Tuesday September 15 2015, @06:47PM
Airliners have engine problems more regularly than anyone wants to acknowledge. What's scary about this one is that the damage was uncontained and it caused a fire. However, this engine fire occurred at a time when the plane was able to stop and everyone was able to get off. The last uncontained engine explosion I recall was with a new Qantas Airbus A380. That was much worse as the plane was in flight.
Info about the Qantas incident here [wikipedia.org] and here [youtube.com].
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday September 15 2015, @07:51PM
That Caused a 777 to Explode in Las Vegas
Does anyone have a link to the final NTSB report or even a prelim? I can't find it, but the journalist link and the title here imply its been proven that the weld failed causing the engine to blow. They usually don't work that fast but maybe...
Meanwhile the article itself contains this disclaimer
They confirmed that the engine involved in the Las Vegas emergency was an earlier version that was not subject to the 2011 AD. Consequently, it is clear that a flaw was introduced into a later version of the GE90-85B and that it was this flaw, the appearance of cracks in a weld joint, that caused the FAA to issue the warning and mandate inspections of the engine to prevent failure.
That makes it even weirder. So theres a problem with software build 2.5.6, bisection indicates the problem code was inserted by a git commit in 2.3.4, therefore a catastrophic end user bug using release 1.2.3 "must" be due to the bug that appeared in 2.3.4?
There are other reporting / editing oddities:
The statement by General Electric said “the AD was essentially a modification to the operating manual.”
That's kind of a big mistake for an engine maker to make, its in the mechanics inspection manual. The AD lists the manual info and everything. So the pilots have nothing to do with it, its a purely maint mechanic / A+P mechanic issue. The TLDR of the AD is modify inspection procedures such that when you're doing regular maint, take a really close look at this reported suspicious weak point. Its nothing to do with pilots or strange claims about Boeing, its a new directive for mechanics doing maint inspections of that particular model engine.
The journalists story is so badly reported and so weird I'd look into pump -n- dump stock manipulation. "Hey best friend, could you short Boeing stock for me tomorrow, I got a mostly fictional hit piece to release and we can split the profits"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday September 15 2015, @08:09PM
NTSB reports on something like this are thorough and methodical like nothing most people have ever seen. It won't happen in a week.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by subs on Tuesday September 15 2015, @09:03PM
You're mirroring my thoughts exactly. This story and the linked article are speculation of the worst kind. They should get a job at CNN so they can cover this non-story 24/7 for the next 3-4 months. Gotta fill that news cycle...