When a turbine engine on a airliner fails can rotating pieces of the turbine enter the passenger cabin area?

Answer 1

Yes it can happen. It happened to a Delta flight a few years ago and killed a woman seated in the last row of the plane. However, there is a kevlar material that surrounds the rotating assembly of the engine to prevent just that from happening. It is very rare.

Answer 2

The engine cans are designed to prevent this, but it happens. A Delta MD88 had this occurrence at Pensacola regional in the late 90's that killed a passenger. In addition an ACA Jetstream 32 had one going into Dulles in 2001, the piece of turbine blade went straight across (luckily empty) Row 1 and embedded itself in the far wall.

For propellers it can be even worse. In 1998 a Navy P-3 was on descent into Masirah, Oman when a pitchlocked, decoupled #4 prop decided it had had enough, fragments took out #3 and then went into the fuselage where they cut the fuel line for the APU and activated the E-handle cables for all the engines. Numbers 1 and 2 shut down and the guys went from a 4 engine aircraft to a really heavy glider in less than 10 seconds. Luckily they were close enough to the airfield that the Omani helos were there to pick them out of the water in less than 15 minutes.

Answer 3

Yes, jet engines are surrounded by a very heavy duty shell to protect from just this kind of thing, during failure blades have on occasion broken through the outer shell and when this happens the blade can spin directly through the cabin and it would happen with such force that it would cut through the plane like a hot knife through butter..however turbine failure to this extent is very rare. Someone mentioned the incident with the DC 10 that lost its hydraulic controls this way yea, luckily the plane had a very good pilot and he was able to line it up with the run way using only throttle to control altitude and only being able to make right turns, the plane landed a little off balance and cart wheeled into a field, half the people on board died but all of them should have.

Answer 4

Maybe.. and also the props....during the WW2 some B-29 had problems because sometimes when hitten the props went away cutting the fuselage.
but actually I think that a greater risk is that a piece of the turbine engine piercing the tanks(that usually are located in wings while engines are usually attached under the wing) and this may cause an explosion, while a piece of engine piercing the fuselage may cause depressurization an kill someone by direct hit, but is relatively less dangerous than the pierce of a tank

Answer 5

I'm no engineer, and while anything is possible with mechanical devices, it is a rare thing for "turbines" to fail catastrophically. The DC10 (I think) in Iowa (also I think) always being the first incident that comes to mind when this topic comes up. In that case I believe compressor blades severed hydraulic control lines in the vertical stabilizer area but did not enter the cabin. Though also rare there's likely more incidents of propellers coming off and slicing into the airframe than there is of compressor blade damage.

Answer 6

It was a lot more of a problem on old propeller planes. If they had a landing gear problem, they would clear people out of the rows of seats in alignment with the props, so pieces of prop didn't hit them when the props bottomed out on landing.

Catastrophic turbine failure is pretty darn scarce anymore. They've really got those things down.

Answer 7

yes. the fan blades can break off. if you look at some military planes with propellors they have a stripe on the fuselage of where the balde would go if it broke off. anything that rotates has centripital force therefore if it braks off it will fly outward.

Answer 8

Oh hell yeah, that happent to me once back in the 60's, damn think cut my manhood right in half, I'm down to only 11 inches because of that, get gov't disability for having only half a dick.

Answer 9

Anythings possible!

Answer 10

it has happened on a couple occasions..