Southwest 737's CFM56 Shed Spinners In November

The National Transportation Safety Board is so concerned with finding a missing aircraft engine part in northeast Texas that it's reportedly considering a search on a scale normally reserved for missing pilots and passengers.

As ANN reported, back on November 17, 2007 Southwest flight 438 was climbing out from Dallas Love Field when passengers heard what they called an "explosion" from the left engine at 25,000 feet. When the 737-300 returned to Love Field, it had a gaping hole in the engine cowling, and it was quickly determined the engine's fan blades had suffered a catastrophic, uncontained failure.

Southwest was criticized in blogs by angry passengers for understating the engine failure as a "vibration" on takeoff, and for sending a letter to the flight's 133 passengers which explained, "The fan blades on the front of the engine were damaged, and rattled around the engine's intake area."

Passengers countered neither that description -- nor the FAA's preliminary incident report -- adequately explained what happened. "It was not during takeoff. There was a lot of damage. There was no vibration. It doesn't say anything about an uncontained explosion at 25,000ft," said one passenger, only identified as "Joe."

The engine in question is a CFM56-3B1, the most popular airliner powerplant currently flying. The engine is manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and Snecma, the latter now a division of the French aerospace company SAFRAN Group. If there's a problem which may affect more of these engines, it could represent a significant risk, due to the number of engines in service.

The front and rear spinners were lost in the engine failure, and NTSB says finding the front spinner is critical to determining whether the spinner or the turbine fan blades failed first.

The front spinner is a dome-shaped object about the size and shape of the top cover to a medium-sized barbecue grill. Based on the flight's speed and location and weather conditions at the time, investigators believe the spinner landed in a marshy, rural area of Hunt County, probably west of state Highway 50 and south of County Road 4403, according to KXAS-5.

Investigators say this is the first time ever they've had to search for a spinner. They don't know whether it will be found intact, or may have been broken up into smaller pieces.

The public has been alerted to look for the object, and Cattle rancher Mike Crowell, who owns most of the land in the area, says he's been keeping an eye out while working his ranch. But, Crowell says, he'd need lots of help to properly search his entire 300-acre property for the part.

NTSB now says it may provide exactly that -- a full-scale search of Crowell's property, and may expand the search area.

Crowell says the government investigators are welcome on his property, but tells the television station "If that plane part fell in certain areas, it might be years before somebody stumbled on it."

FMI: Read The NTSB Preliminary Report, www.southwest.com, www.cfm56.com