Airline Regulators Fret Over Breakups Of GE Jet Engines: Racing to Avert Any More Disentegrations

Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan 12, 2001

[Clinton's a rapist]

You've found two, you say, but the article doesn't mention any.

[Muckraker]

can you say, "time to short GE"!

[Publius6961]

And you decided to post a one-year-old article because...?

[Clinton's a rapist]

So I guess we'll be seeing all the planes with GE engines grounded for inspections and retrofits real soon now, right?

[Vinnie]

Does anybody remember flying in the piston days, on DC-7's and Lockheed Constellations?

Flew to Brazil on a DC-4, 7hrs from Miami to Carracas(sp), another 7hr. from Carracas to Belem. One engine was leaking oil. Oil was running out of the top of the nacelle, down to the trailing edge and into the airstream. I remember pointing it out to the steward. He sloughed it off.
Flew a lot in DC-3's, DC-6 and 7's, Connies. My favorites were Electras and Convair 330's. Loved the exhaust glowing blue on the Convairs.

Remember the United Constellation(I think,may have been a DC-7) that ditched between Hawaii and California, circa 1959? I think all were saved by the Coast Guard.

[Poohbah]

Back in days of yore, I served in the USMC, in various aviation squadrons. Two of them were F/A-18 outfits, and the F404-GE-400 was the F-18's engine. They had a nasty habit of exploding when the pilot hit the afterburner.

Nice to know that the entire company's product line is a load of Hillary...

[Lessismore]

Flew to Brazil on a DC-4, 7hrs from Miami to Carracas(sp), another 7hr. from Carracas to Belem. One engine was leaking oil. Oil was running out of the top of the nacelle, down to the trailing edge and into the airstream. I remember pointing it out to the steward. He sloughed it off.

I flew in a DC-4 from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba, and observed a similar oil flow. Apparently this was normal operation.

[Fixit]

A CF-6 exploding in 1989 causing the famous Sioux City "Cart Wheeling" DC-10 incident.

In March, 1979 an Air France CF-6 powered A300 Airbus was destroyed by fire after an engine broke up and the crew aborted a takeoff from Sanaa Airport in North Yemen. This was before the major re-design that followed.

The two comparable incidents involved a Philippines Airlines DC-10 that lost a high-pressure turbine disk while in flight near Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf, in 1979, and a Thai International A-300 that aborted a takeoff in Hong Kong in 1981 when a disk flew off.

Add that to the above two reference incidents (DC-10 at Newark and the 767 ground incident). Granted, only the engines blew up, but in many of the cases they took the whole plane with them.

[Fixit]

So I guess we'll be seeing all the planes with GE engines grounded for inspections and retrofits real soon now, right?

They already were retro-fitting the repair to all of the engines because they did not want to ground all the affected aircraft. I don't see anyone having the stones to ground a few thousand airliners.

[KneelBeforeZod]

The following airliner models are ranked by the rate of fatal events per million flights.

Fatal Event Rate Per Million Flights

Model	Rate	Flights	FLE*	Events
Airbus A300	0.78	7.7M	5.99	9
Airbus A310	1.59	2.9M	4.62	5
Airbus A320	0.38	7.3M	2.61	5
ATR	0.94	3.2M	3.00	3
Boeing 727	0.49	72.2M	35.34	46
Boeing 737-100/200	0.52	50.4M	26.29	37
Boeing 737-300/400/500	0.28	30.8M	8.76	10
Boeing 737 (all models)	0.43	81.2M	35.05	47
Boeing 747	0.97	13.1M	12.73	25
Boeing 757	0.62	8.7M	5.4	7
Boeing 767	0.65	7.3M	4.73	5
Boeing 777	0.00	0.7M	0.00	0
Boeing DC9	0.59	58.1M	34.41	42
Boeing DC10	0.76	7.8M	5.91	15
Boeing MD11	1.27	0.8M	1.02	3
Boeing MD80/MD90	0.22	23.3M	5.19	9
British Aerospace BAe 146	0.52	5.4M	2.81	4
British Aerospace Jetstream	UNK	UNK	5.22	6
Concorde	12.5	0.08M	1.00	1
Dornier 228	UNK	UNK	6.88	7
Dornier 328	UNK	UNK	0.11	1
Embraer Bandeirante	3.07	7.5M	23.00	28
Embraer Brasilia	0.58	7.4M	4.27	5
Fokker F28	1.78	8.1M	14.45	20
Fokker F70/F100	0.49	3.8M	1.87	4
Lockheed L1011	0.49	5.2M	2.54	5
Saab 340	0.22	9.7M	2.10	3

[okie01]

I don't recall flying on a DC-4, 6 or 7 that didn't have oil streaks behind the nacelles. And the streaks invariably got longer and shinier after every take off.

Those old P&W radials were "bad to spit", so to speak.

[Fixit]

And you decided to post a one-year-old article because...?

Oops, sorry. I posted this because the engine family discussed in this article are the same engines used on the AA A300 that crashed in NYC today.

I should have put that in the comments. My bad.

[Fixit]

Note also that the much maligned (though in reality a fine aircraft) DC-10 has a record no worse than the Airbus A300/310, planes that U.S. media never bother to malign.

There isn't a thing on that chart that surprises me, except maybe the fact I expected ATR's to do worse. The relative rankings on that chart could likely be put together by any frequent flyer who has been a passenger on enough of those birds.

Example: The Saab 340 is a beautiful plane. I used to actually enjoy connecting in Detroit to fly a Mesaba 340B to regional airports. Contrast that to the two flights I've ever had on an Embraer (to and from Decatur, GA from and to Hartsfeld) where I could not wait for the flight to end. Quality is noticable if you fly enough.

[KneelBeforeZod]

Lots of folks on other threads are arguing that the A300 CAN'T dump fuel....if I understand this right, here is a service bulletin regarding doing just that:

http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/aircraft/ad/OVER/AB3/AB3-056.htm

Applicability: All A300 models B4-2C, B4-103, B4-120, B4-203, B4-220, C4-203 and F4-203 aircraft, with production modification number 0013 embodied before delivery. Requirement: Modify the fuel tank jettison system in accordance with Airbus Industrie Alert Service Bulletin A300-28A065 dated 21 April 1993. Note: DGAC AD 93-074-144(B) dated 12 May 1993 refers. Compliance: Prior to 31 December 1994. Background: Compliance with this Directive decreases the likelihood of arcing between the fuel jettision pipe and the fuel tank following a lightning strike on the pipe. The DGAC compliance time is extended by two months.

My frat brother works as a mechanic for United at SFO and also some airport in Hayward....I'll ask him.

[KneelBeforeZod]

http://airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

[Fixit]

I don't think that this is definitive. The aircraft that went down today is an A300-605, a newer variant. I think that you are on the right track, though, and I doubt that a feature would be omitted in a later model

I can not imagine a modern jetliner that would not have the ability to dump fuel. It is procedure before an emergency landing to get rid of fuel to bring the aircraft down to a safe landing weight.

[s2baccha]

Hey thanks for the shout out. I searched Google at about noon central time for "CF-6 GE crash". Pretty freakin' amazing isn't. Not a word about this in the mainstream. Isn't this usually Drudge territory?

I haven't checked, but I wonder if even the Wall Street Journal has noticed this. Isn't this something that can be easily found through a Nexis search?

Anyone know if NBC has said anything about the engine yet, and if so did they give the now customary "which is the parent company of this network" disclaimer.

I don't post a lot, but I'd just like to thank all the freepers for helping me stay informed.

[jwalsh07]

If this is an indication of what you can dig up, you should be posting a hell of a lot more. I searched Google but missed this one.

[Fixit]

I'm with Jwalsh! You should post more often. We need all the search-engine driving, synthesizing wizards we can get