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SW Airlines catastrophic in-flight engine failure

LTC8K6

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LTC8K6
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It will be interesting to see if the cowling broke apart or if this was an uncontained engine failure. The latter should prompt a very rigorous investigation. Debris hitting the plane has me leaning a bit towards uncontained failure.

Southwest uses a lot of older models, so their maintenance reputation is more on the line than the manufacturer's build quality.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be
 
Then again, she was probably belted in, so maybe the stories about the passenger in the window aren't too accurate?

"She wasn't like sucked out of the window or pulled out. But her like arms and her body were sucked, like sucked in that direction, from my vantage point. So you see people, from the back of the seat, holding onto her, you know, trying to keep her contained," Martinez told CNN.

Meanwhile, other passengers were trying to patch the hole in the plane.

"People in the other rows are — just trying to plug the hole, which sounds ridiculous, because you know people are using jackets and things, and it's just being sucked right out," she told CNN.
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LTC8K6 said:
Appears to be N772SW, about 18 years old.

http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b737ng-27880.htm
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[offtopic] You know, when I first glanced at this, I read it "Appears to be NSFW, about 18 years old." I spent a good ten seconds trying to figure out what this had to do with the topic...

:D

Didn't Mythbusters do a test on airplane depressurization? Which is will generate suction, I didn't think it had enough force to (for example) suck a person out of the plane. I suspect some over-reaction/exaggeration by the passengers on that one.

Of course, I reserve the right to be wrong :)
 
Hellbound said:
[offtopic] You know, when I first glanced at this, I read it "Appears to be NSFW, about 18 years old." I spent a good ten seconds trying to figure out what this had to do with the topic...

:D

Didn't Mythbusters do a test on airplane depressurization? Which is will generate suction, I didn't think it had enough force to (for example) suck a person out of the plane. I suspect some over-reaction/exaggeration by the passengers on that one.

Of course, I reserve the right to be wrong :)
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On Mythbusters, the bullet hole was unimpressive and uneventful, but the whole window blow out was almost able to suck Buster out. I don't know what altitude Mythbusters used, either.
 
LTC8K6 said:
On Mythbusters, the bullet hole was unimpressive and uneventful, but the whole window blow out was almost able to suck Buster out. I don't know what altitude Mythbusters used, either.
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Ah, thank you. I mis-remembered it, then.

Getting off my lazy hind-brain, I found info: https://mythresults.com/episode10

The pressure is not high enough and the hole is too small. Explosive decompression only occurred when a hole the size of a window was made with explosives. Even then, the rush of air could not suck Buster completely out of the hole. Lastly, there are proven instances of explosive decompression where the plane was still able to maintain control and land.
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Have to watch the episode for the altitude. I do recall them talking about the equivalent altitude, but I don't recall what it was.
 
From the pictures available it looks like the fan section grenaded. A shed fan blade could easily cause the damage to the window. It's unusual for a fan to fail like this, they operate at lower temps than the compressor section, and much lower than the turbine. Investigation should reveal the cause of the failure. It could be a manufacturing or maintenance fault, but most fan failures I'm aware of were the result of impact by objects. Bird strike, or a drone are possibilities that come to mind.
 
Pope130 said:
From the pictures available it looks like the fan section grenaded. A shed fan blade could easily cause the damage to the window. It's unusual for a fan to fail like this, they operate at lower temps than the compressor section, and much lower than the turbine. Investigation should reveal the cause of the failure. It could be a manufacturing or maintenance fault, but most fan failures I'm aware of were the result of impact by objects. Bird strike, or a drone are possibilities that come to mind.
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Window seems too far back, though?
 
I was expected to see fuselage damage around the window like it was blasted with debris. I don't see anything. Just a missing window.
 
William Parcher said:
I was expected to see fuselage damage around the window like it was blasted with debris. I don't see anything. Just a missing window.
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Yeah, I don't see what I'd expect to see with debris flying towards the fuselage.

I do see leading edge wing damage fairly far out.

The window must have been directly hit by a single piece of debris and then failed.

If there were other holes in the fuselage from debris, that would tend to ease the pressure difference on the window.

I doubt that the window simply happened to fail at the same time.
 
William Parcher said:
I was expected to see fuselage damage around the window like it was blasted with debris. I don't see anything. Just a missing window.
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I've seen a better pic now. I agree, there doesn't appear to be any metal damage around the lost window. Also, it's well aft of where a thrown blade would have hit. I'd speculate that it could have been hit by part of the engine casing or cowing that was separated.

There is what looks like a blade impact on the fuselage at the second down stroke of the "h" in "Southwest".
 

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