Who needs UFO’s, alien conspiracies and new sightings of Elvis Presley? These days, even FOD can inspire the stuff of urban legends. These mysterious photos of damaged engine blades have been flying around the Internet for at least ten years, along with various incarnations of the following story:
For anybody who is not familiar with a jet engine, a jet fan blade should be perfectly smooth. You might want to think twice the next time you fly on a Chinese Airline.
A pilot for a Chinese carrier requested permission and landed at FRA (Frankfurt, Germany) for an unscheduled refueling stop. The reason soon became apparent to the ground crew: The Number 3 engine had been shutdown previously because of excessive vibration, and because it didn’t look too good. It had apparently been no problem for the tough guys back in China: as they took some sturdy straps and wrapped them around two of the fan blades and the structures behind, thus stopping any unwanted windmilling (engine spinning by itself due to airflow passing thru the blades during flight) and associated uncomfortable vibration caused by the suboptimal fan..
Note that the straps are seatbelts….how resourceful!
So what really happened? What are the details? It depends upon which anonymous “expert” you ask on the Web discussion boards. For instance:ff they went into the wild blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only three engines! With the increased fuel consumption, they got a bit low on fuel, and just set it down at the closest airport (FRA) for a quick refill.
That’s when the problems started:
The Germans, who are kind of picky about this stuff, inspected the malfunctioning engine and immediately grounded the aircraft. (Besides the seatbelts, notice the appalling condition of the fan blades.) The airline operator had to send a chunk of money to get the first engine replaced (took about 10 days). The repair contractor decided to do some impromptu inspection work on the other engines, none of which looked all that great either.
The result: a total of 3 engines were eventually changed on this plane before it was permitted to fly again.
Depending on who you talk to……..
- The engine is a CF-6, CFM-56-5C or JT9D1.
- The airplane is a 747, A340 or DC-16.
- The damaged engine arrived in Germany still attached to the airplane.
- The airline removed the damaged engine and shipped it overseas for repair.
- China has the worst airline safety record in the world.
- China has the best safety record in the world.
- China has the same safety record as the rest of the world.
- The airline is Air China, Mandarin or United.
- The airline is based in China, Taiwan or elsewhere in the Orient
- The airline is based in India, Africa, South America or the United States.
- Damage resulted from metallic FOD on the ground.
- Damage resulted from an in-flight bird strike.
- Nobody has blamed UFO’s yet.
About the only thing that nobody has seriously disputed is that the “seat belts” shown in the photos are actually tie-down straps. At least the world aerospace community can agree on something.
The moral of this story? Pick up your FOD or you, too, could become an urban legend.
