United Airlines flight UA328 from Denver to Honolulu had just taken off when the Boeing 777’s right hand engine inlet separated.
The plane, with 231 passengers and 10 crewmembers on board, stopped climbing around 13,000 feet and turned around, landing back at Denver 23 minutes after takeoff. It would have been a very long 23 minutes for passengers on board.
Flight 328 @united engine caught fire. my parents are on this flight 🙃🙃 everyone’s okay though! pic.twitter.com/cBt82nIkqb
— michaela🦋 (@michaelagiulia) February 20, 2021
Incredible photos by Hayden Smith of UA328 suffering an engine failure shortly after departing Denver #UA328 #Denver #UAL328 pic.twitter.com/JF89Q8lPua
— Tamas K-L (@tamaskls) February 20, 2021
Parts from the engine fell down in a neighborhood around 17 miles west of Denver around Broomfield, Colorado. There were reports of a bang and smoke.
United 777 drops engine parts on Colorado neighbourhood shortly after departure from Denver Airport. Aircraft returned for a safe landing. https://t.co/DLcpS5pXGF pic.twitter.com/GwCCkONq5i
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@breakingavnews) February 20, 2021
Events like this happen from time to time. Here’s another United Airlines flight to Hawaii which experienced something similar. Most often things wind up alright, though Southwest Airlines 1380 looms large.
(HT: @gobears99)
Did it really “catch fire”? Isn’t that just the combustion stage exposed?
@Jeff – I didn’t include the tweet for the analysis of the incident just for the passenger’s video
@Jeff
Nope that fire is outside of the engine core.
Yay, I’m sure that this will become another massive hate fest against Boeing despite the fact that Boeing does not make or maintain the engines on any of their aircraft.
One more reason not to trust ETOPS.
A Denver town?
The passengers and crew on this flight were very lucky that the flight just left Denver. If the engine exploded while it was in the middle of the ocean, I don’t know if the captain could make it to HNL or back to SFO with one engine left. God Bless USA and our citizens.
Do you get to keep any airplane pieces that happen to fall on your property?
Is it time for the 4-engine comeback yet?
I think it’s remarkable that something this terrible and usual can happen to a fully-loaded aircraft and no one gets hurt. Flying is pretty darn safe.
@T
Presumably, hopefully, they would have been able to make it to SFO or HNL. The ETOPS certification is about the ability of the airport to make it to a diversion airport on one engine.
I wonder what model engine. If parts fell in my front yard I might decide to keep them too.
Monday’s flight from Denver to OGG is with a PS configured 757-200, the flight to HNL is on an international Polaris configured 777-200, but not with Premium Economy. On the 777-200, it’s 7 rows of 4, instead of 4 rows of 8, so a loss of 4 first class seats.
It looks like the ORD nonstops no longer exist. SFO has a 18×4 Polaris configuration 777-200, while IAH-HNL is on a Polaris 767-300. The last one is the only one which as appears to have space in the front. This has definitely put a crimp in UA’s typical Hawaii flights, which are typically on the now-grounded P&W powered 777-200. The GE engines are still flying
United pushed back maintenance, did that contribute?
Gerald Laderman United’s CFO, at the last month’s annual earnings call:
“For example, as I mentioned earlier, the airframe heavy maintenance and engine overhaul work we postponed last year now has to be done to ensure that we can ramp up the schedule as demand returns.”