Cathay Pacific Worker Discovers Foreign Objects In Airbus A350 Engine Minutes Before Takeoff For Zurich

A Cathay Pacific employee posted to Facebook, before deleting their post, that they caught “foreign objects” left in the engine of an Airbus A350-1000 half an hour prior to departure from Hong Kong.


Credit: Anonymous employee

The aircraft, which first flew on October 25, 2018, and has the manufacturer serial number MSN 233, was taken out of service and passengers were sent to Zurich to continue flight CX383 using a different A350.

Today I was refueling this CX383..BLXF. I saw foreign objects left in the engine before 30 minutes to takeoff,I talk with captain by immed,after check by engineer, the mention aircraft need stop to fly for repair…I should have successfully prevented an aviation incident to happeningAviation safety is everybody responsibility…..
P.S….This post will be delete at hkt 12:00 on 06 Apr 2024.

This was the April 3 flight just after midnight. The trip was delayed about 2.5 hours while transferring to the new aircraft.

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Comments

  1. Why the need to post it on social media if he notified the pilots and they decided they could not take the aircraft?

  2. Waiting for the follow-up story about the maintenance worker who reported it being the one that put the foreign objects there, for attention and hero status.

  3. Doing anything transparent in that region may result in your disappearance or worse
    We are talking about Gina

  4. That’s aluminum foil used to cover bleed connections to detect leaks ! It’s not a big deal ! Probably there’s a small bleed air leak or the aluminum came
    Off the ducting !

  5. Once I found the package of a snack… so what? That’s why we check the airplane before a sector. Wondering if the crew already made the exterior inspection by that time and did not notice the FOD. This would be a bigger concern.

  6. Well we know he is not working at the airport any longer and never will at any in china or their territories! He will lose his security clearance for sure, why would he post that online is crazy.

  7. That’s just a bit of foreign object debris ingested while taxiing to the gate. It would not have remained lodged in the exhaust nozzle of a Trent XWB at anything more than idle thrust.

    Not even an ignorant rural Chinese elder would have deposited that bit of cruft in search of good fortune, and Cathay Pacific is a reputable operator who wouldn’t allow unsupervised passengers onto the apron to load an A350 up truck-mounted stairs anyway.

    Any known ingestion event requires an engineering inspection and this would be no exception. Even a bit of tarp from a baggage car can have fastening rings that could potentially chip fan blades or damage compressor stages.

    Regardless, this looks like an everyday nothingburger, and finding something like that during a routine once-over is nothing for the mechanic to brag about. That is literally his job—maybe it was his first day.

  8. Utter nonscence if the aircraft was delivered in 2018 why are they just now seeing the foreign object, either all the maintenance engineers are blind or more than likely it was left there by them.

  9. Removal of FOD from apron and aircraft surrounding is everyone’s responsibility, Engine intake and Exhaust is must watch area , bravo for Mechanic who point out this for all people of concern to stay more vigilant..Aircraft is like a baby and our utmost concern is extremely intensive inspection , we are paid for it.

  10. The stuff found in the a350 engine was more than likely left there by mistake. Tight turnarounds can make people rush things.

  11. Mr. Munoz is correct; aluminum foil is used to detect bleed leaks on pipes on the engine. Not a big deal.

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