One dead after Southwest Airlines jet engine 'explosion'

[ponder]

The fan casing did not fail, so its not a CFM problem. The engine cowl is purely a Boeing design, so they take the can...

To me it sounds like the casing did fail.

“This accident underlines the vulnerability of the fan case to become separated when the fan blade detaches at a location that was not anticipated,” Sumwalt said after the hearing.

If you look at the image of the engine the fan casing is pretty much completely destroyed. Fand blade-->Fan case-->Engine cowl

 

[Gordon_R]

It seems like Boeing have no choice but to go ahead with an expensive redesign, particularly given all the other bad publicity about pickle-forks and the B737 MAX:

Boeing commits to NTSB safety fixes on thousands of 737 NG jets after deadly Southwest engine blast

Federal safety officials recommended Boeing redesign some engine casings of its popular 737 jets after a deadly 2018 incident on a Southwest flight.

www.cnbc.com

 

[ponder]

It seems like Boeing have no choice but to go ahead with an expensive redesign, particularly given all the other bad publicity about pickle-forks and the B737 MAX:

Boeing commits to NTSB safety fixes on thousands of 737 NG jets after deadly Southwest engine blast

Federal safety officials recommended Boeing redesign some engine casings of its popular 737 jets after a deadly 2018 incident on a Southwest flight.

www.cnbc.com

There again it refers to the engine casing and not the cowl. So does boeing spec the case design for cfm and cfm manufactures to boeing spec, I wonder.

 

[Gordon_R]

There again it refers to the engine casing and not the cowl. So does boeing spec the case design for cfm and cfm manufactures to boeing spec, I wonder.

I think you are fixating on the colloquial use of the word 'casing'. Nobody is in any doubt that this is a Boeing problem.

 

[Ivan Leon]

These technical, mechanical, design & manufacturing issues Boeing has had with both the 737 NG (Pickle Forks) and the 737 MAX (MCAS) validate the argument by many in the aviation industry that, when it was prudent for Boeing to further develop an 'improved version of the 737 'Classic' series (737-300,-400 & -500), in the early 1990's, to remain competitive with the competition from Airbus with their A318, 319, 320 & 321 range, Boeing should rather have opted for a brand-new, 'clean-sheet' narrow-body replacement for the already ageing & outdated 737 design.

Instead, Boeing decided to further stretch the 737 & bolt on even more powerful & fuel efficient engines, whilst having to hodge-podge the inefficiencies of the 1960's era 737 'low-ground clearance' design & aerodynamics with flight control improvements like "Speed Trim' and then 'MCAS' software, in addition to redesigned wings & empennage, in order to keep a common type rating for the 737 and therefore allow pilots to fly ANY of the various 737 versions, without having to undergo any additional costly additional simulator & flight training to get a new type rating.

Boeing already had newer 1980's designs - the 757 narrow-body & 767 wide-body, that could be flown with a common type rating, but these had almost-identical flight-deck layouts & configuration, making this swap-over seamless to the pilots.

As they say, hindsight is 2020 and I am sure that Boeing regrets going ahead with their now self-evident overly rushed and shoddy 737 MAX development, to counter sales of the Airbus A320/A321 Neo series in the US & global markets, which ended up biting them badly in the order books, twice within the space of less than 6 months, with the blood of nearly 400 fatalities blotting their balance sheets a dark shade of red at the end of this decade & still no definite date as to when, if ever, the 737 MAX may fly again.

 

[Gordon_R]

These technical, mechanical, design & manufacturing issues Boeing has had

[snip]

Its time we started calling the company by its real name, to reflect its underlying culture: McDonnell Douglas (bankrupt) trading as Boeing (Inc). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas#1990–1997

Edit: Analysis of the Boeing culture, after their headquarters moved to Chicago in 2001. Link may be paywalled:

The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course

A company once driven by engineers became driven by finance.

www.theatlantic.com

Some errors you see only with the magnifier of hindsight. Others are visible at the time, in plain sight. “If in fact there’s a reverse takeover, with the McDonnell ethos permeating Boeing, then Boeing is doomed to mediocrity,” the business scholar Jim Collins told me back in 2000. “There’s one thing that made Boeing really great all the way along. They always understood that they were an engineering-driven company, not a financially driven company . If they’re no longer honoring that as their central mission, then over time they’ll just become another company.”