Aircraft

Swedish aviation enthusiasts recording tail numbers at Stockholm Arlanda airport were shocked at the weekend to see a Malaysian Boeing 777-200ER suffer a visually dramatic engine failure shortly after take-off. 

The Malaysian Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRI) was en route back to Kuala Lumpur as flight MH091 from New York Newark on Friday when pilots had to return shortly after takeoff at 13:55 due to a problem with one of its Roll-Royce Trent 800 engines.

Swedish newspaper Expressen published photographs of the incident yesterday. The aircraft, with 279 passengers on board, suffered the problem on take-off (pictured below) before continuing to around 8,000ft (2,700m) to dump fuel and then land without problems.

Unconfirmed details that have emerged about the incident from maintenance workers at Arlanda indicate that the inner wall of the D-duct disintegrated on rotation, leading to glass fibre debris being exited from the engine.

The crew idled the engine but had no cockpit indications, it is understood.  After dumping 60t of fuel, the engine was left running at idle until the 777 landed.

One report is that the engine suffered only impact damage on the exhaust nozzle, a firewire and a oil scavenge pipe. Additionally the left flaperon also suffered impact damage and is being changed.

Initial inspection teams from Boeing Seattle and R-R have concluded that blade delamination on the core of the reverser was the probable cause, a source within the maintenance provider has told Flight. No engine defect or operational issue was found by preliminary inspections.

Fredrik Granberg