A job-well-done goes to the engineers who designed the plane to safely fly (briefly) despite major malfunction.

And a slap goes to Southwest for their lack of honesty. I try to believe Southwest, on the account that they would know they can't get away with "engine vibration", when dozens of passengers witnessed otherwise, so they would have to tell the real story. But, I can't believe them when they have far more motivation to lie than these passengers would, so I'll call the airline the liar.

Yeah like I'm going to believe the flying public's hysterical outgrys over pilots and engineers? Yes I realize their version is sanitized too - but that's why I like Patrick Smith's Column when it comes to this stuff:

[dir.salon.com]

It's the FAA's report. Strangely enough, I'll feel safer flying Southwest knowing the pilots aren't just monkeys pushing an auto pilot button.

@jamesdenver: I think the photograph is pretty telling.

@TMurphy: Actually, Southwest is right. Fan blade failure can be caused by vibrations, maybe caused by something being unbalanced. This is NOT an explosion! Why is something flying off an engine considered an "explosion"?

Yes, jet engines can lose fan blades. It's bad when it happens, and yes, it was fortunate that the blade went out away from the fuselage, but THERE WAS NO LIE HERE. Just uninformed hysterical people who either don't know better or who are themselves lying to cover their cluelessness. More likely, they're just clueless and think they're experts.

Hey, hysterical people, how about you let those of us who do know what we're talking about do the talking, and SHUT UP?

Kudos to the pilots for safely putting the plane back down without further incident. I couldn't even begin to describe how I'd handle having an engine rip itself asunder mid-flight.

@LiC: Most pilots do use the autopilot for most of their route. Don't forget the saying that being a pilot is hours of sheer boredom separated by moments of stark terror.

The skill in being a pilot isn't the normal flights. It's handling things when something goes wrong.

The space shuttle flies automatically under computer control for most of the flight. The training you spend hours and hours and hours on is what to do when something goes wrong. What if an engine fails? What if something gets damaged and the orbiter doesn't fly normally on approach? What if?

@Buran: Regardless of whether it is technically accurate or not, the report clearly makes the incident out to be a minor problem rather than a catastrophic one that could have resulted in fatalities.

When someone reads "vibrations", they just think its a minor glitch. Although calling it an explosion might be inaccurate, it certainly more accurately reflects how serious the problem was.

The planes are basically 100% overpowered... there's no problem at all flying on one engine and pilots are well trained to handle such things. In that respect it's not a big deal. Shutting down an engine happens more than you might imagine.

The UNCONTAINED failure of the engine is the part that seems to be of much more concern.

So what? The engine had an "uncontained failure." Sure, it'd be better if it were contained, but the plane did exactly as designed - it kept flying. Engines fail on airplanes everyday, perhaps not as spectacularly. Those engines are incredibly complex machines and even small defects can make turbines fail.

Most airlines outsource their maintenance to other countries.
[consumeraffairs.com]

The engines are the most reliable parts of the aircraft.

I'm curious to see what the investigation reveals.

Glad it ended well, nobody hurt.

Much more exciting than the in-flight movie, eh?

Uh oh, I hope the airlines don't start charging extra for Thrill Ride upgrades.

By the way, commercial airplanes are rated to be able to take off and land using only one engine. That is, during lifting off/approach, if all but one engine says sayonara, and the jet can't make a controlled (non-crashing, burning pyre of flaming hell), it's not certified.

NOT that I'd want to be on that flight. But while adrenaline-charged, it was well within its flight parameters.

PS: the alt text should have read, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty... Fluffy? Fluffy?!

@DallasDMD: Then say "catastrophic failure" which is accurate and still gets the point across.

@DallasDMD: Oh, and I must add that FAA reports have to be accurate. Relatively speaking, this was minor, no one was hurt, the plane can fly on one engine (they're designed to), it wasn't an explosion, and so on. Report's right.

I wonder if they got to use those cool slides.

@Buran: A giant killer fan taking an unexpected trip out of the turbine casing = explosion.

Doesn't say anything about Southwest's side of the story, only the FAA vs the passengers. But the photo does side with the passengers.

Although I don't buy that everyone would be dead if parts had flown inward instead of outward. Casualties possibly, but you really need damage like a TWA 800 (catastrophic explosion) or a UA 232 (massive control failure) to kill large numbers. All they lost was an engine, so no longer impressive they landed it safely, only reassuring.

Picture doesn't show any slides deployed, but the source of the picture is most likely a passenger; doubtful the airline's going to volunteer that kind of thing.

For some reason this makes me feel safer to fly southwest. Knowing that this happened and the pilots were able to land the plane. Also it said they turned around.

I don't care how much safer flying is compared to driving, I'll stay on the ground.

@cde: No, explosive fuel + oxygen + ignition = explosion. Not an engine doing the turbofan equivalent of throwing a rod.

Southwest and the FAA are very good at their jobs. Terrified passengers complaining on the internet are not reliable accident reconstructionists.

@BigNutty: Way to use your brain, monkey.

I'm sure engine failure on a commercial airplane is a scary thing. But I seriously doubt the passengers were in any real danger. Though I don't design commercial airliners, I've got a BS and an MS in aeronautical engineering. That airplane was designed to (A) fly with one engine gone and (B) keep the meat separate from the fan blades even in case of catastrophic failure. And believe me, those safety features are not only rigorously designed, but tested and tested again.

swalve, Kerosene is not explosive. Do you see burn marks anywhere on that engine? there isn't even fuel in that section anyway, the burn cans are more toward the rear. It was just a mechanical failure in the compressor. aircraft are designed to be able to fly on one engine, they can even climb and gain altitude.

stupid people live in fear.. so they'll never fly again, even though they landed safely? brilliant! they can shut down their own lives all they want, I'll just stay informed and educated.

@TMurphy: There are instruments that measure vibration in the engines. So it could have easily started as a vibration that the passengers couldn't feel. There's a certain limit of vibration that's within spec for the engine. I don't see where Southwest was lying.

Because it makes sense for a multi-million dollar company to issue a press release that says "OUR damn engine exploded" in order for the release to better match reports of passengers who by and large STILL feel that flying is more dangerous than driving.

The report also says "engine sustained unknown damage." My bet is that the verifiability requirements for FAA reports are pretty high, and therefore they're only putting in the parts they know to be true. Also, even a catastrophic engine loss shouldn't down an airliner, at 25000 feet they should hopefully be able to make it to an airport. Transoceanic would be alot scarier.

@swalve: An explosion does not need to be chemical or fire-based in nature. Too much pressure in a container = explosion. The Violent and unintentional ejection of a major piece of an item = explosion.

I am stunned at the level of fear and ignorance expressed here. I cannot even begin to refute every single wrong bit of info, but the big items: engines fail (sometimes very impressively) and airliners are DESIGNED TO FLY ON ONE ENGINE!!! We train for this every year, because out in the real world they just don't fail very often. If this scares you, take the bus.

Engines are designed to adequately protect the passengers from an uncontained fan blade failure. Notice that shards didn't go anywhere near the cabin...they were very lucky.

Giving a hyperventilating person pure oxygen from a bottle is about the worst thing one can do...

@cde:
To the casual observer, a turbine blade failure will look and sound like an explosion of the engine.

However, the FAA is concerned about accurate technical descriptions in its reports, and technically, the detachment of turbine blades while in motion is not an explosion.

Those FAA reports are very preliminary so to argue over the wording of it is silly. This is considered an incident not an accident but that is because of faa definitions. I do not think explosion is the proper term for what happened here. The proper term would be uncontained fan blade failure (most likely) which the engine designers account for and is actually tested for in engine certifications. Check out this video [www.youtube.com] to see how they did it for the A380. Now this is just a fan blade failure. If you have say a bearing failure then it could be more than the case can handle. Blade failures are very serious and have caused accidents/deaths in the past but I think in this case the damage doesn't look to bad. There will likely be extra inspections and possibly ADs because of this.

@P41: UA232 was a near replica of this incident with exception to the fan blade on 232 going into the fuselage and ripping through all primary and redundant hydraulic control lines. The fan blade on this SW flight went to the outer and away from the plane.

UA232's fan blade failed due to a QA issue at the point of manufacture.

@cde: Still wasn't an explosion because by your definition there wasn't a container in which there was too much pressure. Ejection, perhaps. Explosion, no.

Sound like they understated it, but I also doubt the casual passenger understands what they saw and the extent of its meaning. Some people think they are going to die when the cable tv signal goes out for 10 minutes... Lets get some testimony from the passengers that didn't think it was a big deal.

@BigNutty:
You and me both. At least on the ground when something goes wrong... you're on the ground. Not falling from the sky.

While this incident may not have involved an explosion, I think to call it "vibration" is pretty ridiculous. At the least, an engine housing was shattered or ruptured and parts flew out at high speed. So glad it ended well.

@swalve: Thank you. You've got it right. No matter how much the posters arguing with us may want this to be an explosion, it wasn't.

@ElizabethD: Actually, that's how this sort of thing gets started -- vibrations where there shouldn't have been any. And since reports about things like this discuss what went wrong in the first place, the report says there were vibrations.

@stormyk: Absolutely correct. The Airframe is supposed to contain most of the damage from a "catastrophic failure", and and explosion or detonation is technically an extremely rapid expansion in volume (normally a gas by-product of the material used and the high amount of heat produced) at supersonic speeds.

Sorry if that did not translate correctly, it the closest as I could do since English is my second language.

@Hyland: It's not. Driving is many times more dangerous than flying.

People who think flying is more dangerous are crazy considering you barely need any "training" to be licensed to drive, but you get tested much, much, more and go through much, much more training to get a pilot's license.

If people want to be able to make that claim, then how about fixing those licensing and testing requirements for driving?

@rioja951: That was perfect. Your English is fine.

Where's William Shatner when you need him? (This is not a Star Trek reference)

BTW, before anybody tries to say terrorist, I spent my time before going civilian in the army, sure i was not in the demolition squad but got the basic explosives training.

Damn, those were good times, too bad my instructor said I had a disturbing love for things disappearing in big balls of fire. Maybe that why I was not allowed to train for and work in EOD.

Relax people, an engine failure is not the end of the world. And if the blade would have hit the cabin, it would have probably hit the baggage compartment. The chances of a blade hitting the cabin are probably 1 out of 36 (probably a 10 degree arc which could have hit the passenger cabin). And it wouldn't have been explosive....

I can't blame the passengers for being scared to death; I would have been as well. However, the harsh reality of it all is that every time you step on an aircraft (or into an automobile, or an elevator, or anywhere, for that matter), there's always a very small chance that you will be killed. Accidents happen and will continue to do so, no matter what steps we humans take to prevent them.

If you follow the external link, you can see the pictures of the engine. Clearly the turbine is missing a number of vanes, and probably whatever hit the turbine and whatever shrapnel was generated exited the left side of the engine housing. It was also noted that the spinner was missing (the cone that sits on the end of the turbine shaft), so perhaps that either came loose or was dislodged by debris and got "eaten" by the turbine vanes.

As far as the description of the accident as "unknown vibration"...do you really expect the first description of the incident to be "catastrophic engine failure" before the engine has even been inspected and the NTSB investigation completed? I think not.

Stuff happens...sometimes really bad stuff..but there's always the usual rush to blame it on somebody, even when nobody is at fault.

I think the Southwest crew that got the plane down in one piece should be commended.

@BOBERTO said: "UA232's fan blade failed due to a QA issue at the point of manufacture."
Failures are NOT the result of a QA issue. A failure (or situation that might cause a failure) is not caused by inspection. The failure might have been missed in an inspection, but it can't be caused by inspection. Engines are unlikely to be affected by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
(oh, I suppose if the "inspection" used a big hammer to check the blades like a tuning fork, then, yeah, maybe QA caused the failure: whack! whack! Sounds good. ship it.)

My worst flight (outside of storms: wheeee!) was when a jet was on approach then as we were about a hundred feet off the ground, the jet turned (a lot) on its axis, then pitched the other direction, then its nose pointed towards the sun and all four engines roared (loudly) and I felt VERY heavy.

Unnerving. To say the least.

Did the approach again and everything went to plan. Asked the flight crew what happened on the way out and the pilot smiled and said, "We felt it was better to make a second pass at the approach since (I honestly forgot why, it was that mundane)."

> What's a heart-pounding experience for passengers is something barely worth a mention for a well-trained crew. They're pros, let them do their job with a minimum of whimpering and armchair quarterbacking, please.

@Buran:
You know, you and I disagree on nearly EVERYTHING that is posted on here, but in this case, I whole-heartedly agree with you.

The "outrage" related to this is absolutely absurd. There was no "Explosion". A fan blade failed, and came out of the engine cowling. Nothing "Exploded", the fan blade was simply ejected from the engine, which caused the outer cowling to shatter. Further, the FAA's report is likely based heavily on the pilots initial report. They felt a vibration when the blade failed. and reported it. They certainly didn't report "the engine exploded". That being said, what do you people think happens when you have a circle of metal blades spinning at 20,000 RPM's and it starts to vibrate a little? Parts come off.

I was a passenger on this flight and I wrote about our experience- I really didn't think my words would be such a controversy. When I wrote about the incident, I didn't know that this would be a big story and get so much attention, I just wanted to let someone know that this was not just vibration like it said on the FAA site. I give total credit to the awesome pilots that we had on that flight because they landed that plane with no further incident. But try to imagine being up 25,000ft, relaxing and then you hear what sounds like an explosion and then the plane is making loud "rattling" noises and you can feel it in the plane. We didn't know what was going on, we could see holes in the engine and the plane was shaking so badly.
I don't know anything about airplanes and I'll be the first to admit that but when you hear and see fear in the attendants then you know that this is not good. I hope this doesn't happen to someone else because as much as I will try to act like this won't bother me the next time I fly, and I will fly again, then that would be a lie.
All I wanted when I wrote about my experience is that people knew that this was not a small incident and we are lucky that whatever flew out of the plane went out and not toward the plane because we were sitting right over the engine and may not be here. All I know is that if this could be prevented from happening again and maybe next time being fatal, then I'm glad that this is making people talk but don't criticize my feelings because as well as these pilots are trained, you were not on that plane.