NTSB: inspect GEnx regularly

In a blow to Fairfield-based General Electric Co. and its GE Aviation division, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) take “urgent action” to inspect GEnx aircraft engines on a regular basis, following a pair of shaft failures this summer.

GE Aviation developed an ultrasound technique to inspect shafts in the engines, with similar failures occurring to jets in Shanghai and Charleston, S.C. In both cases, the jets were on the ground and no one was hurt. In another instance, a third engine was found to have a defective shaft during tests at Boeing’s Seattle operations.

Boeing Co. retained GE Aviation and Rolls Royce to produce engines for its new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, with the GE offering the GEnx and Rolls Royce supplying the Trent 1000. Rolls Royce also encountered early problems, replacing gearboxes with possible corrosion problems supplied by the Hamilton Sundstrand division of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp.

GE Aviation has yet to state any plans for a total replacement of the fan shaft in question, or how much such a replacement would cost.

“Because of the short time to failure and the fact that all of the engines on any single airplane, whether the 787 or the 747-8, have all operated for the same period of time, the NTSB is not only concerned about the potential for further fractures occurring, but also the possibility that multiple engines on the same airplane could experience (a fan midshaft) failure,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman wrote the FAA.

“The NTSB is concerned about the possibility of an FMS fracture occurring in flight at the limits of an airplane’s extended twin-engine overwater operations ”¦ and the airplane having to operate with one engine inoperative for up to (five-and-a-half) hours.”