Engines That Failed on 2 Jets Similar

An engine that blew apart in Saturday’s Florida accident involving a Delta Air Lines plane was virtually identical to another engine that failed during a TWA flight the same day, forcing an emergency landing in Omaha, Neb.

Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for engine maker Pratt & Whitney, described the engines as “very close,” both belonging to the JT8D-200 series.

In Pensacola, an engine on Delta Flight 1288 blew apart Saturday as the MD-88 was preparing to take off. Two people were killed. On the same day, a TWA flight from Seattle to St. Louis made an emergency landing in Omaha when one of its twin engines failed, airport officials said. No one was injured. The TWA aircraft was an MD-80, an earlier model of the MD-88.

The failed engine in the Florida accident was a JT8D-219, slightly more powerful than the JT8D-217 engine involved in the Nebraska accident, Sullivan said.

In the Florida accident, investigators have yet to determine whether there was some internal problem with the engine or whether it sucked in a foreign object as the plane tried to take off, said George Black of the National Transportation Safety Board.

But they did find that a 100-pound titanium hub inside the engine broke into two pieces, Black said Sunday night.

“It was broken one-thirds, two-thirds roughly. Some of the fan blades were still attached to it,” Black said. “We only know it separated. We do not know why.”

Shrapnel ripped a gash about 1 foot wide and more than 4 feet long across the side of the plane, killing Anita Saxton, 39, and her son Nolan, 12, and injuring two of her other children.

Saxton, of Scottville, Mich., had been vacationing with three of her five children. The two injured children were discharged from the hospital on Sunday and were reunited with their father, who flew to Pensacola late Saturday.

Five of the other 142 passengers aboard the jet also were injured, but only one remained hospitalized Sunday, listed in serious condition after surgery for a broken leg.