airplane manufacturer boeing is calling
for the grounding of more than a hundred
of its triple seven jets worldwide
following an engine failure
of a united airlines plane on saturday
shortly after
takeoff in the u.s state of colorado the
plane's right engine
blew apart raining debris on homes near
denver airport
the plane landed safely and there were
no reports of injuries but boeing said
airlines
should suspend using triple sevens with
the same type of engine
as the one involved in that emergency
landing
well let's bring in rob watts from our
business department
rob after this whole 757 drama that's
been unfolding over the last
couple of years actually what's this
latest emergency now what
effect will it have on the company well
there are a few sectors where people are
more concerned about safety than the
aviation sector than flying through the
air at enormous
speeds and boeing is just coming off the
back of as you mentioned
a safety scandal you know with the 737
max so it's been very keen to be seen to
be acting
quickly on this particular issue and it
has already called on the grounding of
these
triple sevens with this specific pratt
and whitney
engine but this is very different to the
737 max
situation mainly because boeing doesn't
make the engines on these planes and it
is the engines that
have been failing they are made by this
company pratt whitney which is one of
the
three big makers of civil aviation
engines
and it's there that they'll be asking
the big questions because these engines
are clearly
failing ahead of time there have been
three incidents involving the engines
on triple sevens in just a few years so
it's
it's with frat and whitney where really
the questions will be being asked
so how big is a problem is this going to
be for airlines who run these models
well i don't wish to use the word
thankfully but
because of the coronavirus pandemic
there are much fewer of these in the air
than
you might have might expect there's a
global fleet of about 130 planes
and uh 69 of them are currently
in the air the rest of them are out of
use so that's one reason why it'll have
a small impact there are only six
airlines that are using this
playing with this specific engine as
well just united airlines in the united
states and then there's
two airlines in japan and three in south
korea so that
shows you again that it's not a
particularly widely used
aircraft and also these are old planes i
mean the plane that was involved in the
incident over the weekend was
26 years old these are not very
efficient planes
and actually airlines were already
starting to phase them out japan
airlines
was planning to get rid of its triple
sevens with this pratt whitney engine
in a year's time anyway so hopefully the
disruption
will not be enormous united says that it
only expects a very few passengers to be
inconvenienced by it
robots from our business department
thank you rob thank you