Boeing 777 Engine Blast Spurs Grounding of Some Older Jets

Airlines grounded dozens of older Boeing Co. 777 aircraft after the failure of a Pratt & Whitney engine showered debris into a Denver suburb and prompted U.S. regulators to order emergency inspections.

United Airlines Holdings Inc. halted operations of 24 of its planes in the wake of the incident involving one of its fleet over the weekend, after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered fan-blade checks on PW4077 engines. Japan’s transport ministry grounded aircraft with the engine variant on Monday, while Korean Air Lines Co. and Asiana Airlines Inc. idled theirs and the U.K. banned such jets from its airspace.

The incident on United Airlines Flight 328 from Denver to Honolulu took place shortly after it took off on Saturday with 231 passengers and 10 crew members on board. The Boeing 777 landed safely back at Denver and nobody was injured by the falling debris. Footage of the burning engine was filmed by a passenger, while people on the ground captured scenes of the plane overhead and scattered aircraft parts near houses.

The scare comes at a sensitive time for the global aviation industry, which is trying to emerge from a year in crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on travel. For Pratt, the United incident came on the same day as a separate emergency in the Netherlands on a 747 cargo jet using the same family of engines. Boeing is only just dusting itself off from the nearly two-year grounding of its best-selling 737 Max jet following fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia.

The Pratt engines are installed on a small portion of the twin-aisle 777s in service, and many such long-distance planes have been idled as the pandemic decimated international air travel.

Boeing fell 1.5% to $214.20 at 9:38 a.m. in New York. Raytheon dropped 1.5% to $73.17.

Two fan blades were fractured on the United flight, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Most of the destruction was contained to the engine and the plane suffered only minor damage.

While the Denver event doesn’t suggest broader problems with the 777, a twin-engine wide-body plane typically used on intercontinental routes, it adds another urgent issue to Boeing’s to-do list just after the 737 Max was cleared to fly again in markets including the U.S. and Europe. The company also halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliners to check for manufacturing flaws.

“We recommended suspending operations of the 69 in-service and 59 in-storage 777s powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines until the FAA identifies the appropriate inspection protocol,” Boeing said in a statement, adding that it supports decisions by the FAA and Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau to temporarily ground aircraft powered by the engines.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said Monday it was in touch with the FAA about the Denver incident and an engine failure in the Netherlands on Saturday. On the Dutch flight, a 747 cargo plane had to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Maastricht.

Pratt engines were used on the earliest versions of the 777, with the United example making its debut in 1995. While the manufacturer doesn’t make engines for newer wide-body aircraft, it collects service and parts revenue. Many older, larger planes are already in storage or retired due to a lack of demand for long-distance flights during the pandemic.

The inspections could hasten the end of the earliest 777 models if the repairs turn out to be costly, said George Ferguson, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “They are already out of favor because of their size and the pandemic.”

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