Parts of a United Airlines aircraft engine lay strewn around the Broomfield County of Colorado, US after it suffered an engine failure shortly after takeoff.The Boeing 777-200 with 231 passengers and 10 crew onboard landed safely at the Denver International Airport.
The United flight 328 was headed to Honolulu when the right engine suffered a failure.The US National Transportation Safety Board has initiated an investigation into the incident.NTSB's Denver-based investigators are currently going through the debris recovered from Broomfield to find out what caused the 26-year-old aircraft's Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine to fail.
Boeing is yet to give a statement. In a statement, United Airlines Pilots' Union commended the crew of United Flight 328 for safely returning to Denver after experiencing a significant uncontained engine failure.The statement further said that extremely rare engine failures like this prove that there is no substitute for experience.
The statement said that the most important aircraft safety system is two well-trained professional pilots at the controls on the flight deck.The Colorado incident is scaringly similar to the damage suffered by a Japan Airlines 777-200 in December which had the same type of Pratt & Whitney engines. In that incident too, the aircraft lost a panel and suffered fan blade damage. The aircraft, however, landed safely.