How NTSB’s hearing on Southwest Airlines fatality could affect 6,000 planes worldwide
NTSB is holding a hearing Wednesday on the Southwest Airlines engine failure that killed a Dallas-bound passenger in April, and the probe could change Boeing 737 inspection requirements for more than 6,000 aircraft worldwide.
The hearing on Southwest Airlines flight 1380 is being broadcast online live from Washington. The April 17 flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dallas Love Field was interrupted when one of the aircraft’s two engines failed, sending metal debris through a window and killing passenger and Wells Fargo executive Jennifer Riordan.
The flight made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
The hearing likely will focus at least partly on how often the engines should be inspected, said Mike Slack, a Fort Worth aviation attorney representing some passengers on the flight.
“They will look at the evolution of the service history and what the operator, Southwest, did and did they seek to modify the certified inspection and maintenance levels on the engine?” Slack said.
The hearing focuses on a handful of versions of the Boeing 737, including 737-600, 737-700, 737-800 and 737-900 series. All told, roughly 6,856 aircraft have been manufactured in those series, Slack said, although it’s not precisely known how many of those planes are still in service.
Much of Southwest Airlines’ fleet is made up of recent versions of the 737 aircraft, and other major airlines favor the model as well.
The engine in question is CFM 56-7 b series, manufactured for Boeing by CFM International.
Southwest Airlines has actually had two incidents involving the failure of the CFM engine. In addition to the tragedy on flight 1380 in April, the airline also experienced an engine failure in 2016, although no passengers or crew members were injured. In the 2016 incident, the aircraft made an emergency landing in Pensacola, Fla.
Since the Pensacola incident, inspections have turned up eight instances in which the blades of the CFM engines had cracks that could have led to failures, Mark Habedank, engineering leader for the CFM 56 program, testified to the NTSB.
Of those inspections where cracks were found, four were on Southwest Airlines aircraft and four were on aircraft belonging to other airlines, he said.
This story was originally published November 14, 2018 at 10:09 AM.
