FAA Asks Why Owner Did Not Report Incident

The FAA is investigating why a Mitsubishi MU-2 freight plane suffered engine failure, and threw a turbine disk while on approach to Chicago's Midway Airport early Friday morning. The agency is also curious why the company apparently did not report the incident.

The twin-turboprop cargo hauler en route from Milwaukee was a mile out when the incident occurred, according to the FAA. The six-inch turbine wheel fell through the roof of a home at about 1:30 am -- burning through shingles, plywood, and insulation, before coming to rest in Dorothy Gohn's bedroom.

"I heard this thud, and it woke me up," Gohn told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I woke up and saw this thing laying on the floor. It was about two feet from my bed... I went to pick it up, but it was so hot that I burned my finger a little bit. Actually, it was so hot that it burned through my carpeting."

Gohn, who is in her 70s, said she didn't think much of the incident originally -- she went back to sleep shortly after -- but a neighbor's son told her the next morning the metal piece may have come from an airplane.

"...He said, 'That's got to be from an airplane because it's so heavy and big,'" Gohn told the paper. "Then he looked in a crawl space up in the roof, and there's a hole in the roof, so it came all the way through."

Investigators with the NTSB and FAA traced the part to an MU-2B-36, registered to American Check Transport, a short-haul freight operation that primarily deals with handling bank proof work and other small cargo.

FAA personnel later found the plane in a hangar at Midway, with "significant" damage to the engine and wing. Neither the company's owner, nor the pilot, had reported the incident.

"If they knew about it, and they should have known about it... that needs to be reported," FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said. "We have to look into that aspect of it."

Officials at Englewood, CO-based American Check Transport declined to comment.

As for Gohn, she appears relatively unfazed by the incident.

"Well, as long as nobody was hurt and the house didn't catch on fire," she said. "I'm sure it was accidental."

FMI: www.faa.gov