The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), US airspace regulatory agency, has directed airlines with
the same engines as the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 to carry out a thorough
inspection of the engines’ fan blades.
The Southwest Airlines aircraft
suffered an engine failure which forced it to make an emergency landing on
Tuesday. The aircraft uses the same engine as Arik Air and Air Peace, two of
Nigeria’s leading airlines.
In an emergency order issued on
Friday, FAA instructed airlines to carry out ultrasonic inspections on fan
blades of engines with more than 30,000 cycles within the next 20 days.
An aircraft cycle includes an
engine start, a takeoff and landing, and a shutdown.
The FAA said it has determined
that fan blade cracking “is likely to exist or develop in other products of the
same type design” and added that it was “considering further rule making to
address these differences”.
Prior to the emergency order, CFM
International, manufacturer of the engines, had issued guidelines for the
ultrasonic inspections.
CFM recommended that fan blades
with 20,000 cycles should be inspected by the end of August.
It also advised airlines to
inspect all other fan blades when they reach 20,000 cycles, and that it should
be repeated at every 3,000 cycles.
According to CFM, about 14,000
engines in service are covered by the new inspection guidelines.
To facilitate the recommended
inspections, CFM said it was providing about 500 technicians to accelerate the
process.
In March, an Arik flight from
Lagos to Accra, Ghana, made an emergency landing after the pilot detected a
smoke in the cabin.
“The aircraft is currently parked
in Acrra and our team of engineers are conducting comprehensive inspections on
the aircraft to ascertain the cause of the smoke, after which the aircraft will
be flown without passengers to a maintenance facility for rectification and
testing,” Arik had said at the time.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com