Air travel has been severely affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, and many airlines and aerospace companies feel the economic pressure. Boeing, however, was in serious trouble before the virus due to fatal flaws in its 737 MAX aircraft, and now it appears that its problems will continue.
According to the FAA, the engines of several variants of Boeing’s 737 aircraft have developed problems for so long, due to low demand for air travel. Although there have been no accidents or forced landings yet, the individual engines have failed four times in flight thus far.
The FAA reports that the problem has to do with one of the air bleed valves, air bleed number five in particular, at the compressor stage of the turbofan engine. This valve opens during takeoff and then closes in the lowest throttle positions, such as when the aircraft begins to descend to land. However, due to corrosion, this valve can remain open when it is supposed to be closed. This means that the engine stops and cannot be restarted in flight.
Of course, this corrosion is caused by the long periods of time that many airlines have been sitting. The FAA considers an aircraft to be “in storage” if it has been sitting for more than 7 days, so many aircraft have definitely been stored under FAA standards.
If you are curious about the exact wording of the FAA on the subject: “Corrosion of the internal parts of the engine bleed air check valve during airplane storage can cause the valve to stick in the open position. If this valve opens normally at takeoff power, it may get stuck in the open position during flight and not close when power is reduced at the top of the descent, resulting in unrecoverable compressor shutdown. “
The FAA is directing airlines to inspect this section of the engine on multiple 737s, to be specific; 737-300s, -400s, -500s, -600s, -700s, -700Cs, -800s, -900s, and -900ERs. Since all of these aircraft share similar engines, they are all affected. Even though all of these planes have the same engines, and the same goes for the left and right wings, of course, there has still been no double engine failure. The four planes mentioned in the introduction all lost one engine, which fortunately gave them the ability to safely return home.
If this problem were to occur on both engines of a 737, it probably wouldn’t be such a happy ending. The FAA says that if that happened, a “hard landing outside the airport” would probably be necessary. I don’t think I have to break down what that means for passengers.
As mentioned above, the FAA has established a series of guidelines to ensure that this relief valve works properly before takeoff. However, that’s a little less comforting due to the fact that approximately 2,000 planes across the country are likely to be affected by this issue.
So if you really need an additional excuse to avoid air travel in addition to the pandemic, here it is. Maybe it would be better to drive.
h / t: Slashgear
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