CNN
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No less than two main airways have warned pilots that if a chicken hits one of many engines on a Boeing 737 Max, the passenger cabin could become filled with smoke.
Paperwork newly obtained by CNN element that Boeing warned Southwest Airways and American Airways of the potential downside in February and each airways in flip despatched alerts to their respective pilot teams.
“Boeing has obtained two stories of CFM LEAP-1B engine failures following giant chicken strikes on takeoff and preliminary climb,” mentioned the alert to American Airways pilots. Southwest’s alert says such a strike might trigger oil to burn and the “instant presence of smoke and fumes” coming into the passenger cabin “by way of the air con system.”
The difficulty was not made extensively public till being first reported by The Seattle Times however is critical because it might sign one other potential challenge with 737 Max plane which have been dogged by manufacturing and design points.
Engine maker CFM Worldwide says their engine has met “chicken ingestion certification necessities, and the engines carried out as designed throughout these occasions.”
The corporate underscored that birds within the two incidents that prompted pilot bulletins have been a lot bigger than required for certification testing and that the CFM engine nonetheless carried out as designed.
The Federal Aviation Administration says it “will proceed working with Boeing on the investigation into these incidents and can decide if extra actions are required based mostly on the findings.”
Boeing says it issued a service bulletin in February “after two chicken strike incidents” and has been working with engine producer CFM “to study extra about this matter and we’re retaining the FAA and our operators knowledgeable of any learnings.”
On Tuesday, outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun informed lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he accepts duty for the airplane maker’s current failures, together with a door plug blowout on a 737 Max 9 and the crash of two 737 Max 8s that killed 346 individuals overseas.