Southwest airlines #1380 30,000 ft. fan blade failure

kcran567

ACCESS: Top Secret
Joined
14 August 2009
Messages
679
Reaction score
61
Southwest airlines fan blade failure and containment ring failure, one businesswoman dead after being sucked half way out of the aircraft at 30k ft.

4/17/2018


http://abc7ny.com/metal-fatigue-eyed-in-southwest-incident-that-killed-woman/3360054/
 

Attachments

  • engine.jpg
    engine.jpg
    71.5 KB · Views: 391
  • engine1.jpg
    engine1.jpg
    73.8 KB · Views: 384
  • southwest-engine-plane-ht-ps-180417_hpEmbed_2_3x4_992.jpg
    southwest-engine-plane-ht-ps-180417_hpEmbed_2_3x4_992.jpg
    127.9 KB · Views: 386
  • 2018-04-17-PHOTO-00001591-696x392.jpg
    2018-04-17-PHOTO-00001591-696x392.jpg
    49.4 KB · Views: 365
kcran567 said:
Southwest airlines fan blade failure and containment ring failure, one businesswoman dead after being sucked half way out of the aircraft at 30k ft.

Let's be careful with terminology. There's no evidence that this was an uncontained failure - the containment ring looks intact and the NTSB appears to have pieces of the fan blade. They know it broke in two places, which implies that they have at least one part in addition to the stub that remained in the fan disk. This suggests to me that at least part of the blade was recovered, possibly from inside the engine.

Several eye-witness reports suggest there was a noticeable delay between the initial bang (fan blade failure) and a second event that broke the window. My hunch would be that there was a contained failure that led to an unbalance/vibration condition that caused the cowl to fail catastrophically. Something from the cowl is what hit the fuselage and broke the window, leading to the fatality.
 
Even more that the position of the window that was broken suggests that it was a flying debris instead of a purely ballistic one (such as would be a ruptured blade).
 
The broken window location behind the wing
 

Attachments

  • medium_2018-04-19-ba4baa1c0c.jpg
    medium_2018-04-19-ba4baa1c0c.jpg
    206.9 KB · Views: 298
TomS said:
Something from the cowl is what hit the fuselage and broke the window, leading to the fatality.
I would really love to follow the simulation team that figures that one out. That has got to be one heck of an edge case collision scenario.
 
NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said "As the aircraft was climbing through about 32,500 feet, the engine parameters, both RPM indicators on the left engine went down to zero, oil pressure went down to zero, and the engine vibration increased significantly on the left engine," he said.

Shortly thereafter, the cabin altitude warning horn was activated, indicating that the cabin altitude was "going down to about 14,000 feet," said Sumwalt. The aircraft then began an uncommanded left roll at about 41 degrees of bank angle, compared to the normal 20 to 25 degrees of bank that is typical when flying a commercial airliner, such as the 737, according to Sumwalt.

41 deg bank and roll to left is pretty significant, that probably when the debris hit the passenger window, as mentioned above there was a delay when the window was hit after the failure.
 

Attachments

  • SWA-Flight-1380-NTSB.jpg
    SWA-Flight-1380-NTSB.jpg
    85.1 KB · Views: 20
  • cowling.jpg
    cowling.jpg
    13.3 KB · Views: 242
No disrespect intended, but the fuselage behind the failed window is not a pretty sight. I hope it was quick.
 
Orionblamblam said:
mrmalaya said:
I hope it was quick.

It could hardly have been otherwise. Fortunately.

It wasn't, the passenger died after she was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing -----
 
kitnut617 said:
Orionblamblam said:
mrmalaya said:
I hope it was quick.

It could hardly have been otherwise. Fortunately.

It wasn't, the passenger died after she was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing -----

No, the passenger was pronounced dead at the hospital. That doesn't mean she wasn't actually dead long before that, only that you don't pronounce someone dead until resuscitation has ended, and they train EMTs that once you start resuscitation, you don't stop until a medical doctor says so.
 
mrmalaya said:
No disrespect intended, but the fuselage behind the failed window is not a pretty sight. I hope it was quick.

Oh. OH. I hadn't realized that's what that was. Jesus.
 
TomS said:
kitnut617 said:
Orionblamblam said:
mrmalaya said:
I hope it was quick.

It could hardly have been otherwise. Fortunately.

It wasn't, the passenger died after she was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing -----

No, the passenger was pronounced dead at the hospital. That doesn't mean she wasn't actually dead long before that, only that you don't pronounce someone dead until resuscitation has ended, and they train EMTs that once you start resuscitation, you don't stop until a medical doctor says so.

The news reports I've been reading say she was removed from the aircraft unconscious, they had been performing CPR since they pulled her back into the cabin. She may have died on the way to the hospital but the news reports aren't specific.
 
kitnut617 said:
The news reports I've been reading say she was removed from the aircraft unconscious, they had been performing CPR since they pulled her back into the cabin. She may have died on the way to the hospital but the news reports aren't specific.

I think there's a certain amount of discretion at work in the media here. No need to discuss the gory details too explicitly.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom