An uncontained fan blade failure on a Rolls-Royce (R-R) Trent 892 will lead to additional check procedures on the engine type.
Emirates says no-one was hurt in the 30 January incident at Melbourne International Airport, Australia, because the blade separated early in the Boeing 777-300's take-off roll, which was aborted. Boeing confirms that engine debris damaged the fuselage and other parts of the aircraft, and that one complete fan blade and part of a second were not contained.
Late last week R-R said that the fan blade had separated from its disc. The UK Civil Aviation Authority responded by issuing an advisory to all Trent 800 operators to carry out a visual inspection of fans.
The CAA issued an airworthiness directive in July 1998 requiring more frequent inspections of 17 variants of the Trent 892, 892B, 884, 877 and 875 following the discovery of cracking at fan blade roots in test engines, but since then manufacturing changes were adopted and blades retrofitted.
In September 1997 an Emirates 777-200 recovered safely after the failure of a high pressure compressor blade in a Trent 877 late in the take-off roll.
Source: Flight International
