777 engine failure KDEN UA328

767 was the first two engine certified for ETOPS. ETOPS specifies how far, in flight time, an aircraft can be from a suitable landing strip. There are many factors that determine how long that can be. Usually it is 180 minutes (for 2 engines, I believe more than 2 engines can go up to 240 mins) but several factors can lower that to 120 minutes or less. Each airplane is given special maintenance inspections prior to each ETOPS flight. A reduction in ETOPS time can be caused by unreliable aircraft at the given airline. Let’s say airline X has had a lot of maintenance issues this can lower that airlines ETOPS time. The other interesting thing is the “suitable” landing strip. While the airport can have the airplane safely land often times it can be at an airfield where there are no passenger services. A few years back a Delta 767 landed at Cold Bay AK. I think the population of the town literally doubled when the airplane landed. Talking to the pilots it was an interesting event! The town opened up places for the people to stay, like the fire station etc. Delta dispatched another jet to pick up the passengers fairly quickly but Cold Bay is a long way from pretty much every where and if I remember correctly the pax were there for about 12 hours.

As far as limiting altitude when flying over the North Pole I’ve never heard of this. I’ve been to about N80 and never had to fly at a lower altitude.

 

Missing fan blade clearly seen in this video

 

Glad I was able to teach you something new. Check the flight plans for cargo and passenger jets flying the North Pole routes in the winter.

 

The brown colored area is the fan blade containment, i.e. mostly dry kevlar with outer layer of kevlar with resin. It is designed, and full scale tested, to contain a fan blade, or at least a partial fan blade. Interesting, sort of, that this appears intact. This means the blade flew forward after separating and impacted the nose cowl, hence why the nose cowl separated. Remainder of cowling was either compromised by that departure or flew off due to air loads after the nose cowl departed.

 

Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

So partial blade failure. Not unusual for a blade to fly forward after failure, it is after all producing 'lift'.

 

US and Japanese airlines flying 777s with the P&W engines have been grounded as a precaution. F-14 and F-111 aircrews have had some bad experiences with P&W turbofans, too. Ours were admittedly a little more high strung.

 

United took a deal with Boeing to take 777’s at a discount and cancel Dreamliner orders because Boeing was falling behind.

I wonder how that decision looks now.

 

I've flown the 777 many times over the Pole from NY to China. We were never altitude limited for the engine. I have had to descend to a lower altitude for reaching the minimum fuel temp limit when extremely North. It's till pretty rare to have to descend for any reason other than the wind or the ride.

This airplane was one of the legacy UAL models (A/B). The only engine problem I ever encountered was on a B Model with the PW engines. I've never seen an engine problem with the GE equipped C models.

 

I was told that if it reached a certain below zero temp the engines performance drops so they only go to 20,000 feet during the deep winter as the atmosphere drops due to the extreme cold air's density . Is that not true?

 

Great airframe, crummy engines.

 

Completely different engines with different technology in construction of the fan blades.

 

Yep.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/boeing-747-cargo-plane-drops-engine-parts-netherlands-n1258485

 

I stand corrected.

 

What I was talking about was dispatchers routing aircraft under the tropopause and going where there was atmosphere with denser air in the winter. Also I heard temps can get as low as -100F in the winter near the North Pole wich they try to avoid as most jet engines don't like it that cold . During the summer the tropopause goes to a higher altitude. Sorry this has nothing to do with this engine failure but I was amazed by this when told by a few of my dispatcher friends.

 

Now the linkage makes more sense. Pratt & Whitney was one of my older brother's first big accounts when he worked for IBM in the 1960s.

 

The deal was for 777-300 with GE engines...

The original UAL 777 A models have the PW engines that have thrown fan blades.

 

The problem is the public doesn't understand this.

 

True, only 24 of that type flying right now have been removed from service. Losing the engine in a 777 is not the problem, not being contained is! The additional drag of losing the cowling and other parts of the engine covering could be problematic at the wrong place in the middle of the ocean. The additional fuel burn becomes critical.

 

United removed all its 747's from SFO to Asia and replaced them with 777's. Probably the biggest downgrade ever for the coach passenger.

 

Wasn't this considered a contributing factor to the BA 777 'crash' at Heathrow? I believe they had ice in the fuel system causing fuel starvation.

 

https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/22/boeing-plane-engine-failure-netherlands-emergency-landing/

 

Being a Boeing airframe really had nothing to do with these incidents. But the dummies in the press do not know that.

 

Even a fully intact engine and cowling that is shutdown, i.e. just windmilling, will cause substantial drag. Not sure if etops numbers are based on an intact windmilling engine or one with missing parts. For an engine with an imbalance, such as thrown blade, there is also a large increase in loads and extensive analysis is done to ensure the engine mounts/nacelles/wing and even some fuselage structure does not suffer a failure from fatigue.

 

It says that was a Rolls Royce Trent 800 FOHE issue. Not sure if the routing had anything to do with it but it could be. By the way, what made me originally look into these routings was I noticed a 777 ORD- DEL flight was routed at 14,000 feet over the pole on a very very cold winter day. Had to do a double take and see why