Royal Brunei B788 near Manila on Oct 21st 2015, engine shut down in flight, both engines damaged

Last Update: April 24, 2016 / 13:07:48 GMT/Zulu time

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Photo of Royal Brunei Airlines V8-DLB, Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — Royal Brunei Airlines V8-DLB, Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (Photo credit: tagsplanepics-lhr / Flickr / License: CC by-sa)

Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 21, 2015

Classification
Incident

Cause
Engine shut down in flight

Airline
Royal Brunei Airlines

Flight number
BI-684

Departure
Manila, Philippines

Destination
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Aircraft Registration
V8-DLB

Aircraft Type
Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner

ICAO Type Designator
B788

A Royal Brunei Airlines Boeing 787-800, registration V8-DLB performing flight BI-684 from Manila (Philippines) to Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei) with 152 passengers, was climbing out of Manila when the crew stopped the climb at FL280 reported the left hand engine (Trent 1000) had failed and was shut down. The aircraft returned to Manila for a safe landing on runway 24 about 50 minutes after departure.

The flight was cancelled.

The airline confirmed the Dreamliner's crew received abnormal indications for one engine prompting the captain to turn back to Manila for technical checks. A number of passengers have already been rerouted onto other flights, the remaining passengers were taken to hotels.

Philippines' Civil Aviation Authority reported the crew informed air traffic control the left hand engine had failed and declared emergency.

On Oct 28th 2015 the airline reported that while preparing the change of the left hand engine a boroscopic inspection of both engines confirmed, that BOTH engines had sustained similiar damage.

The airline wrote: "Rolls Royce has conducted a detailed boroscope inspection of both engines as part of preparations to replace the affected engine, with a spare which has already been transported to MNL from BWN. However, in recent hours information has been conveyed to the airline by Rolls Royce that the second on wing engine on this aircraft has itself being the subject of similar damage. The boroscope inspection has now revealed evidence of damage to a number of blades on both engines, for reasons which are as yet unknown. At this point, there is no evidence that an external event such as a bird strike has caused this damage to both engines. Efforts to establish the cause of the damage by Rolls Royce are continuing, fully supported by the RB Engineering team."

The airline continued that as result of this finding all Dreamliners in their fleet are to undergo boroscopic inspections now, too, causing "very severe" disruptions of flight schedule in the coming days.

On Mar 14th 2016 the FAA issued Airworthiness Directive AD 2016-06-08, subsequently superceded by Airworthiness Directive AD 2016-08-12 issued on Apr 22nd 2016, which likely provides an insight into the background of the occurrence with V8-DLB. The FAA argued: "AD 2016-06-08 was prompted by a report of a significant fan rub event involving a GEnx-1B Performance Improvement Program (PIP) 2 engine, apparently caused by partial fan ice shedding and a resulting fan imbalance that in turn caused substantial damage to the engine and an in-flight non-restartable power loss. GEnx-1B PIP1 engines have model designators GEnx-1B( )/P1. GEnx-1B PIP2 engines have model designators GEnx-1B( )/P2. We continue to investigate this issue with Boeing and GE; however, the engine damage appears to be a result of susceptibility to heavy fan blade rubs common to the GEnx-1B PIP2 engine. The other engine on the event airplane was an older design GEnx-1B PIP1 configuration that incurred expected wear and minor damage during the icing event and continued to operate normally. The event occurred in icing conditions at an altitude of 20,000 feet." As result the FAA mandates revised procedures for ice shedding for all aircraft equipped with GEnx engines and mandates a number of twin aircraft equipped with two enhanced GEnx engines with specific engine parts need to have at least one engine reworked or replaced to prevent both engines being similiarly susceptible to fan blade rubs.