Rare? Rusty? Routine?

"Getting reports that a plane …had engine trouble and dropped debris in several neighborhoods." - Broomfield, Colorado Police Department on Twitter

“The captain accomplished a one-engine-inoperative approach and landing to runway 26 without further incident.” – NTSB

Flames spewing from a shattered engine. The 239 passengers and crew onboard had to have been terrified. People on the ground thought the sky was literally falling.

The Pilot Flying, with 20,000 flight hours as Captain since joining United 30 years ago, and the 11,000-plus hours, 20-year First Officer, had lifted the Boeing 777-222 twin-engine from DEN barely four minutes before. “The airplane was climbing through an altitude of about 12,500 feet msl with an airspeed of about 280 knots,” according to the NTSB, when the flight crew advanced power “to minimize time in expected turbulence during their climb up to their assigned altitude of flight level 230.”

“Immediately after the throttles were advanced a loud bang was recorded on the CVR.” Uncommanded shutdown. Engine fire warning.

“328, uh, heavy. We’ve experienced engine failure, need to turn. Mayday, mayday. United, uh, 28, United 328, heavy. Mayday, mayday …”

The flight crew began to complete checklists, and discharged both fire bottles into the engine, though “the engine fire warning did not extinguish until the airplane was on an extended downwind for landing.”

“They elected not to dump fuel for safety and time reasons and determined that the magnitude of the overweight landing was not significant enough to outweigh other considerations.”

Passengers said the plane “shuddered” the entire 24 minutes after the engine explosion until landing. "There was no panic among the crew, there was no panic among the passengers," recalled one pax.

NTSB stated: “Airport Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) met the airplane as soon as it stopped on the runway and applied water and foaming agent to the right engine. The base of the engine experienced a flare up, which was quickly extinguished. Once cleared by ARFF, the airplane was towed off the runway where the passengers disembarked via air stairs and were bussed to the terminal.”

Perhaps the best four words in the NTSB report: “There were no injuries …”

The names of the Captain and FO, to my awareness, have not been released, known only to their peers and grateful passengers. They are hailed by some as heroes, though they might say “just doing our job.”

They proved to be resilient, adaptive, terms in vogue in the aviation training community. Once past the initial startle of the muffled explosion, the shaking, asymmetric thrust, and alarm lights and audible warnings, “you start pulling the power back on it, and then you start into the checklist,” says Capt. John Cox, head of Safety Operating Systems. “This is the same process that you’ve done numerous times in a simulator.”

There are those who have questioned in recent years the value of training engine-outs, which happen about once in every million flights. United 328 is one answer.

Thanks to an agreement between the airline and the union, these pilots were not “rusty” from a long, pandemic-induced lull in operations. Instead of furloughs, hours were reduced and schedules adjusted, but thousands of United pilots continued to fly … and train.

This will now become a case study, lessons learned. Our community is well-versed in self-examination to try to preclude repeat episodes. Flight school students and airline pilots in recurrent training simulator sessions will pay a little more attention to engine-loss scenarios.

The focus of the NTSB investigation is now on the powerplant. “One fan blade was fractured transversely across the airfoil… The blade’s fracture surface was consistent with fatigue.” Three years ago, the NTSB faulted Pratt & Whitney for lack of training in their thermal acoustic image inspection process, which led to "an incorrect evaluation” and similar engine failure/loss of cowling over the Pacific Ocean on UA1175. Ironically, “the same replacement aircraft used to accommodate the passengers from this incident” in resuming their journey to Hawaii.

Training for the rare event, and the routine, is an essential safety-critical element. For pilots. For cabin crew. For maintenance techs. For controllers. For all professionals in the aviation chain.