Scare for Shanghai passengers as plane forced to turn back to Sydney
Print Edition
PASSENGERS on a China Eastern Airlines flight from Sydney to Shanghai heard a bang shortly after Flight MU736 took off.
“We went up in the air and all of a sudden we heard this noise ... it kind of smelt like burning. Oh, I was scared. Yeah, I was really scared. Our group was terrified,” one unidentified passenger told Australia’s Seven News.
Another passenger, identified only as Eva, said cabin crew tried to calm passengers and told them to fasten their seatbelts after a noise was heard.
“We were very panicked because we had no idea what was happening,” she told Channel 9 television.
Pictures of the aircraft after it returned to Australia late on Sunday showed a gaping hole in the casing of one of its engines.
Passengers said crew cleared seats near the affected engine.
One told Channel Nine: “The wing to my left just started making a massive amount of noise and they cleared all of the seats.”
The plane, an Airbus A330-200 twin-engine jet, landed without incident and no one was injured, said Kathy Zhang, general manager for the Oceania region at China Eastern Airlines.
“The crew observed the abnormal situation of the left engine and decided to return to Sydney airport immediately. All passengers and crew members were landed safely,” she said.
Photographs published by several Australian media outlets showed a large gash well over a meter long in the casing of the left engine.
The Australia Transport Safety Bureau has begun an investigation and an update would normally be available within a month but could come sooner if a “more serious issue” was identified in its early stages, said Bob Armstrong, a spokesman for the bureau.
A spokeswoman for Rolls-Royce, which manufactured the plane’s Trent 700 series engines, said in a statement: “We are aware of the incident and will be working closely with our customer and relevant partners to understand the cause of the issue.”
An Airbus spokesman said the company was in contact with Rolls-Royce to determine what had happened, and it would support the investigation into the incident.
Professor Jason Middleton, an aviation expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said it appeared the engine cowling had been ripped away forward of the main compressor blade.
“When one of these things happens you often don’t know how the damage began. It could have begun from loose screws,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp News.
Zhang said a comprehensive investigation would involve aviation authorities from Australia and China. Ground-handling company Cathay Pacific had inspected the plane before takeoff, she added.
“The engine for the aircraft is a big issue so we need to investigate with the governments, with the Rolls-Royce company and with our headquarters as well,” she said.
AirlineRatings.com editor Geoffrey Thomas said investigators would be looking at whether the acoustic paneling of the engine had become detached, citing a similar incident last month involving an Egypt Air A330.
Thomas said an Airbus airworthiness directive issued in 2011 and updated in 2014 noted that some operators had found acoustic paneling in the cowling area was coming unstuck.
“It was a problem that they knew about and airlines had been warned and had been required to inspect their engines and if necessary replace the panels,” he added. “Whoever is looking after the maintenance of the engines, whether it is the airline or the engine maker, it’s their responsibility.”
He said the China Eastern incident was unusual and the damage to the engine meant it was likely to be replaced.
But despite the drama, Thomas said the damage was not as severe as the engine failure experienced by Qantas Singapore-Sydney flight QF32 in 2010 due to a separate problem, which led the Australian carrier to ground all its A380s.
The robustness of today’s engines meant twin-engine jets could continue taking off — when they were under the most stress — even if there was a failure of one of them, he said.
“Engines today are so reliable that in fact some twin-engine airplanes are certified to fly up to 330 minutes flying time away from an alternate airport,” Thomas said.
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