American Airlines, O'Hare International, Chicago…

[kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Chicago Tribune....

20 minor injuries after plane catches fire on O'Hare runway:
‘Everybody started panicking’

Twenty people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, mostly bruises and ankle
problems, after an American Airlines flight bound for Miami caught fire on a runway
at O'Hare International Airport as it was taking off Friday afternoon, officials said.

By LIAM FORD, WILLIAM LEE and GRACE WONG | 6:39PM CDT - Friday, October 28, 2016



AMERICAN AIRLINES Flight 383 was rolling down the runway at O'Hare International Airport on Friday afternoon, bound for Miami, when the plane skidded to a halt just as it was lifting off.

The pilot got on the radio. “American 383 heavy,” he said, referring to the Boeing 767's weight class. “Stopping on the runway.”

“Roger, roger. Fire,” a traffic controller calmly replied, according to a recording of tower radio traffic.

The pilot asked if the tower controller saw fire.

“Yeah, fire off the right wing.”

Then seconds later, the pilot said, “American 383, we're evacuating.”

The plane's 161 passengers and nine crew members scrambled down emergency chutes on the left side of the plane while flames flared and thick black smoke billowed from the wing on the right side, according to the airline and video from the scene.

Twenty people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, mostly bruises and ankle problems, according to Fire Chief Juan Hernandez, the EMS chief at the airport.

“The smoke started coming in and the flames just started going along the windows on the right side,” said one of the passengers, Alan Lemery, 62, from the River North neighborhood. “Everybody started panicking at that point.”

People rushed toward the exits. “Then for some reason, everything happened very slowly and orderly,” said his wife, Marta Lemery.

Video of the scene shows passengers sliding down chutes. Many of the passengers can be seen running across a median of grass, some lugging their bags. Some passengers gather a distance away and watch as fire trucks circle the plane.

“Crazy, man,” one passenger is heard saying. “I'm never f------ flying again.” People around him can be heard laughing.

It took fire crews only a few minutes to bring the fire under control, officials said. As the smoke cleared, the blackened right wing could be seen sagging and touching the tarmac.

The FAA said the problem started with a blown tire, but American said the takeoff was aborted "due to an engine-related mechanical issue."

A large rounded piece of metal believed to have come from the plane smashed through the roof of a UPS facility on the airport grounds and bounced off the floor, according to an airport worker. “It looks like a piece of a turbine disk from a jet engine,” the worker said, adding it was too hot to touch.

Few people were inside the building at the time and no injuries were reported. The facility is filled with workers at night. Police secured the scene and turned it over to the National Transportation Safety Board, which was investigating the incident.

The plane had started to take off around 2:35 p.m. on Runway 28R, according to the FAA. Passengers said the plane was just lifting off when it slammed back to the tarmac.

“It was a scary moment,” Marta Lemery said.

Her husband said he saw flames on the right side of the plane as the plane skidded across the runway before finally stopping. The lights went off.

The initial panic quickly faded and “people were not really jumping or pushing” as they made their way down the aisle and the chutes, said Marta Lemery.

The couple applauded the pilot for making sure everyone got out safely. “The way the pilot conducted the situation, he did an excellent job,” Marta Lemery said.

Alan Lemery added, “When you get a little older, excitement is good. It wasn't our day to die.”

They are booked on a Saturday morning flight for Miami, where they plan to catch a cruise.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-plane-fire-ohare-20161028-story.html

[ErrolC]

Interesting wing failure (post-fire, presumably).
When aluminium gets hot, it loses strength, right?

[kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Associated Press....

Official: Plane in Chicago had ‘uncontained engine failure’

By HERBERT G. McCANN and JOAN LOWY | 8:40PM EDT - Friday, October 28, 2016


In this photo provided by passenger Jose Castillo, fellow passengers walk away from a burning American Airlines jet
that aborted takeoff and caught fire on the runway at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Friday.
— Photograph: Jose Castillo/Associated Press.

CHICAGO — A federal official pointed to a rare and serious engine malfunction after pilots were forced to abort a takeoff and evacuate passengers from a burning American Airlines flight Friday on a runway at Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

The official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said American Airlines Flight 383 to Miami experienced an “uncontained engine failure,” in which engine parts break off and are spewed outside the engine. The danger of such a failure is that pieces effectively become shrapnel and can cause extensive damage to the aircraft.

Flames and heavy black smoke poured from the side the Boeing 767 jet as it sat on the runway on Friday afternoon, and officials said the incident left 21 people injured. Footage from the scene showed passengers coming down emergency slides and hurrying across grass next to the runway as emergency vehicles surrounded the plane. The right wing was drooping toward the ground and appeared to have partially melted.

Passenger Sarah Ahmed told WLS-TV the plane was speeding down the runway when she heard an explosion and saw flames and black smoke. She said everyone on the right side of the aircraft jumped from their seats and moved to the left side.

“People are yelling, ‘Open the door! Open the door!’ Everyone's screaming and jumping on top of each other to open the door,” Ahmed said. “Within that time, I think it was seven seconds, there was now smoke in the plane and the fire is right up against the windows, and it's melting the windows.”

The pilots reported an engine-related mechanical issue and aborted the takeoff, according to American Airlines spokeswoman Leslie Scott.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the plane made an emergency stop around 2:35 p.m. after experiencing a problem during takeoff. An earlier FAA statement said the plane had blown a tire.

Chicago Deputy Fire Commissioner Timothy Sampey said 20 passengers suffered minor injuries as they used the emergency chutes to evacuate. American, which had earlier said eight people were injured, later confirmed the 20 figure and added that one flight attendant was also injured.

Buses were sent to pick up the passengers and bring them back to the terminal, Scott said. The passengers were to be placed on another flight to Miami on Friday evening.

The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation into the incident, with investigators expected to arrive on the scene on Friday evening, spokesman Keith Holloway said.

Uncontained engine failures, which the official cited as the cause of Friday's incident, are rare these days due to improvements in design and the metallurgy. They usually are caused by engines sucking in objects like runway debris or a bird, or maintenance crews failing to replace parts that wear out.

Tom Walsh, an airline pilot who also works as a security consultant, said that engines that break apart can be especially serious if the parts end up cutting fuel lines or damaging other vital components of the aircraft.

But he said even such catastrophic failures don't necessarily doom a plane — even if a pilot runs out of runway and must take off.

“Planes are meant to fly with one engine,” said Walsh, who has also flown Boeing 767s. “We are trained so that we can lose the engine at the worst possible time … and then still successfully take off and land.”

One of the best-known incidents of uncontained engine failure occurred in 1989, when 111 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-10 crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa. There were 185 survivors.

Such engine failures are taken “very seriously” in the aviation industry, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety consultant. It's mandatory that airlines reports the failures to the NTSB, he said.

“It's something everyone in aviation safety tracks very carefully,” said Cox, president of Safety Operating Systems.

The aircraft involved in Friday's incident was built in 2003 and is among American's youngest planes of that model. According to data from FlightGlobal, an aviation news and industry data company, at the start of this year the plane had flown more than 47,000 hours and made more than 7,500 cycles — each takeoff and landing is one cycle. American is flying 767 aircraft that have more than 100,000 hours and 18,000 cycles.

• Joan Lowy reported from Washington, D.C., Associated Press writers Michael Tarm and Caryn Rousseau in Chicago also contributed to this report.

hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PLANE_FIRE_CHICAGO

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Another General Electric CF6 engine spitting the dummy and chucking parts out of the cot?

[Bruce]

Good to see everybody had their carry - on luggage with them too...

[kiwithrottlejockey]

from AVIATION WEEK....

Probe Continues Into American CF6 Failure

By GUY NORRIS | Wednesday, November 02, 2016



ACCIDENT INVESTIGATORS are puzzling over the causes of the first ever failure of a second-stage high-pressure (HP) turbine stage on a General Electric CF6-80C2 engine which suffered an uncontained release of debris during the October 28th takeoff run of an American Airlines Boeing 767-300ER from Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, aided by GE, are analyzing remains from the 1998-built No.2 (right) engine, which the manufacturer describes as containing “very high-cycle discs.” The NTSB, which reported on October 29th that at that stage 90% of the disk had been recovered, is focusing on identifying potential faults with the metallurgy, machining and forging of the part, as well as the specific bill of materials of the failed engine. Depending on findings, the agency will likely issue a call for an immediate inspection of other discs in the same suspect population.

Despite extensive fire damage to the right wing and engine, the flight crew of American Flight 383, bound for Miami, was able to stop safely on Runway 28R. The nine crew members safely evacuated 161 passengers, 20 of whom were taken to hospitals with minor injuries resulting from their escape from the aircraft.

Although CF6 engines have previously suffered uncontained failures, the Chicago event is the first to involve a second-stage HP turbine. GE says no previous airworthiness directives have been issued in relation to this CF6-80C2B6 stage, which was manufactured in Germany by MTU using material from GE. Previous uncontained CF6 events have largely been related to failures of the first-stage HP turbine or low-pressure spool.

Incidents involving the former event type include the failure of a CF6-80A engine on an American 767-200ER during engine run-ups at Los Angeles International Airport in June 2006. Another, significantly higher-profile event, was the July 1989 fatal crash in Sioux City, Iowa, of a United Airlines DC-10, which was caused by the fan disk failure of an earlier-generation CF6-6D. Like the engine involved in the recent Chicago incident, the CF6 in the Sioux City crash was 18 years old when the failure occurred.

Regardless of the NTSB finding, it is likely the American incident will refocus industry attention on the safety issues surrounding the continued operation of aging engines. The CF6 engine event is the latest in a string of three to occur in a little over a year to GE or joint-venture company powerplants with significant high cycle times. The uncontained failure of a GE90 HP compressor on a British Airways 777-200ER at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport on September 8th, 2015, occurred on an engine that dated from 1995, while the uncontained failure of a CFM56-7B fan blade caused by metal fatigue on a Southwest Airlines 737-300 over the Gulf of Mexico on August 27th took place on one of the earliest engines to enter service.

aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/probe-continues-american-cf6-failure