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Mr. Luddite[_4_]

On 4/17/2018 5:20 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 17 Apr 2018 15:04:22 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

What's up with all these jet engines exploding or disintegrating in flight?

Seems like there's a report of a failure about every month.

Reminds me of a visit I made to the Pratt & Whitney jet engine plant
in West Palm Beach years ago. I was given a tour of the facility
and in one room a group of people were sitting at tables inspecting
turbine blades used in the engines. The Pratt engineer
I was with explained that they were all blind and inspected the turbine
blades for imperfections by feel. He said their sense of "feel" was
greatly enhanced due to their loss of sight.

===

Those engines have a very good safety record however so maybe there's
something to it. Commercial aviation in general is one of the safest
forms of travel although I dislike the hassles involved. Private
aviation, not so much.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-safest-aircraft-54428

No question the safety numbers are impressive. It's even more
impressive when modern aircraft can lose half it's engines and
still fly and land successfully. Hard to do in a Cessna 172.

The original 737 had Pratt engines that looked like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Boeing_737-200_%28Brasilia_Air_Base%29_JT8D.jpg

They were eventually replaced with CFM International engines
(a joint venture of GE and Safran Aircraft Engines of France)
and have the odd looking, non-circular intake:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/CFM-56_Lauda_737.jpg

A new engine is being introduced for the 737, again built
by CFM International, that looks like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Boeing_737-9_MAX_CFM_LEAP-1B_PAS.jpg