Following an engine failure on Saturday, United Airlines has temporarily suspended all of its Boeing 777-200 aircraft featuring Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines.
United Airlines Grounds 777-200 Subfleet With Pratt & Whitney Engines
On Saturday, a United Airlines 777-200 traveling from Denver to Honolulu experienced right engine failure while climbing over Denver. Although the images were scary (an engine on fire is never comforting), the plane safely made it back to Denver and no one was injured.
Flight 328 @united engine caught fire. my parents are on this flight 🙃🙃 everyone’s okay though! pic.twitter.com/cBt82nIkqb
— michaela🦋 (@michaelagiulia) February 20, 2021
Incredible photos by Hayden Smith of UA328 suffering an engine failure shortly after departing Denver #UA328 #Denver #UAL328 pic.twitter.com/JF89Q8lPua
— Tamas (@tamaskls) February 20, 2021
United Airlines has responded by grounding all 24 Boeing 777 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines from its schedule. United noted:
Starting immediately and out of an abundance of caution, we are voluntarily and temporarily removing 24 Boeing 777 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines from our schedule. Since yesterday, we’ve been in touch with regulators at the NTSB and FAA and will continue to work closely with them to determine any additional steps that are needed to ensure these aircraft meet our rigorous safety standards and can return to service. As we swap out aircraft, we expect only a small number of customers to be inconvenienced.
Safety remains our highest priority – for our employees and our customers. That’s why our pilots and flight attendants take part in extensive training to prepare and manage incidents like United flight 328. And we remain proud of their professionalism and steadfast dedication to safety in our day to day operations and when emergencies like this occur.
United currently has a large surplus of aircraft, so impact upon consumers will be limited. In fact, those headed to Hawaii this week originally on a 777-200 will likely see a more comfortable internationally-configured 777-200, 777-300ER, or 787.
A Repeat Incident?
One Mile at a Time reminded me that this wasn’t the first 777-200 Pratt & Whitney incident on United. In 2018, a similar incident happened on another flight to Hawaii, though the engine did not burst into flames:
Scariest flight of my life #ua1175 pic.twitter.com/hjCvrJ9VwV
— Maria Falaschi (@mfalaschi) February 13, 2018
After that incident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that aircraft inspections failed to notice that the fan blades were weak.
It will be interesting to see if the UA328 incident encountered a similar problem three years later.
CONCLUSION
United Airlines has temporarily grounded all of its Boeing 777 subfleet featuring Pratt & Whitney engines. An investigation is ongoing.
image: @tamaskls / Twitter
..only 24 772 are taken out of service.. not a bid deal in the realm of things… the remaining 28 are still in storage, and will remain there for a while….so not too much of a disruption… I was told they had planned to retire many of them by 2022.
Are you and Lucky still BFFFs post pandemic? Just curious 😉
can they not replace the domestic 777-200s with a 788, at least for the long haul Hawaii routes?
Would lead to an increase in the number of premium seats, allowing UA to dominate the high end leisure market. Maybe even start marketing Hawaii flights as Polaris and sell PP on those routes