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Aug 11, 2009 9:44 pm US/Central
3 Emergency Landings In 5 Days For AA
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Hundreds of passengers flying in and out of DFW International Airport received quite a scare over the past five days. Since Friday, three American Airlines flights were forced to make emergency landings after an engine failed or was shut down.
"Three engine shut downs in five days is nothing to sneeze about" says pilot Jennifer Ewald.
Ewald flies MD-80's for American and says the recent series of engine shut downs has her and fellow pilots concerned.
"Any time you have an engine failure in flight or an engine shut down of any kind, it's always an emergency."
This past Friday, an American MD-80 left Palm Beach bound for DFW. According to an airline maintenance report, an engine turbine failed on takeoff. The captain turned the plane around and made an emergency landing.
That same day, AA flight 1432 from DFW to Newark made an emergency landing in Indianapolis because of low oil pressure. The pilots on that MD-80 also shut down the engine.
"If you have something go wrong at 30,000 feet, you can't just pull over at a gas station and check it out" says Ewald.
It happened again Tuesday, when an American MD-80 from DFW to Chicago returned to DFW because of low oil pressure.
"We're trending in the wrong direction. In-flight engine failures and shut downs are one of the most serious problems you can have in an aircraft" says Scott Shankland with the Allied Pilots Association.
According to the Allied Pilots Association union and the FAA, so far in 2009 the engines on 22 American planes have either failed or were shut down in flight. 14 of those planes were MD-80's. The Allied Pilots Association is currently in contract negotiations with American Airlines.
American is not disputing the numbers. A spokesman for the airline says the MD-80 is their most reliable airplane. He adds that "Since 2006, in-flight shut downs have decreased across the board, year after year."
MD-80 engine shut downs, however, have remained flat since 2007. Meanwhile, the three shut downs in the past five days have caught the attention of the FAA, but the agency is not ready to push the panic button.
Lynn Lunsford with the FAA explains. "Before you start deciding whether it's alarming, you have to get into the issue and look at exactly what caused it to happen. The FAA is aware of these and is looking into them, but hasn't seen anything that looks like a trend."
Some pilots, however, argue that it is alarming. They point to a near disaster on March 11 when pieces of an American MD-80 engine rained down over Queens, New York. That plane also made an emergency landing.
American flies more than 2000 departures a day. The FAA says when you compare the number of shut downs to yearly departures, there is little cause for concern.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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