Why has this particular passenger decided to share "on social media" instead of alarming the cabin crew? What was he/she/... thinking? It is OK to take off in an airplane with an engine falling apart in front of my eyes? Why?

If the aircraft was far enough down the runway, past a point at which the aircraft can abort (Aircraft type, Weight and conditions dependent, known as "V1") a takeoff, then the aircraft will take off, declare an emergency and do a go-around. The flight crew would also shut down the failing engine.

It's better to go around than plow off the end of the runway and crash.

There is no 'WTF' about it.

In fact, from TFA, it was well beyond the point where it could abort: "The engine cowling struck the wing flap as the aircraft left the runway ".

pay attention.

You do know that you can call the crew *and* share a video later.

Either they alerted the crew immediately and shared the accident later, or someone else had already alerted the crew, or, most likely, the crew was already alert on account of all the screaming. I honestly can't fathom why you would think that this was an "instead of" situation. There's enough in this story to be outraged at already, no need to make up more.

The fact is there's almost nothing that you can "alarm" the aircrew about that will matter, once you are rolling.

The Aircraft becomes airborn about 30 seconds after starting.

Everything the pilots need to know at that point is coming from their controls and gauges.

"Alerting" the crew while the fasten seatbelt sign is on will either get them ignored, arrested or shot depending on skin color.

Interestingly airport security is one area where danger from law enforcement is a non-monotonic function of skin color

This is the "emergency" landing being filmed. You can tell by the position of the flaps.

After having looking elsewhere for more information I now realise that the video is of the landing and not the takeoff, however the initial cowling problem did indeed happen during takeoff..

They took off and the cowling opened so they went around and immediately landed.

Which is annoying on a 737. One of the interesting 'historical' features of the 737 is that it can't dump fuel so you either have to fly around ion circles for a few hours - not recommended if you suspect you have a bit of wing missing, or you land overweight and risk damaging some expensive concrete

> Which is annoying on a 737

Is there anything which isn't annoying or dangerous? This is starting to get ridiculous!

"Boeing, named for the sound their aircraft make when dropping out of the sky"

"This is you Chaplain speaking."

Icon - Nuff Said.

Scour your sheds, empty out those jam-jars. Send nuts and bolts to our friends in Seattle.

None of that metric rubbish, Imperial or Whitworth only.

All major airliners use Imperial fasteners - even Airbus.

When airbus was trying to break into the US market they realised that demanding every mechanic buy a new set of tools and have everyone stock a confusingly similar set of nuts, bolts and screws would be a challenge - so they stuck to precision components based on the length of 3 barley corns

They are not Imperial Fasteners, they are Freedom Fasteners. This might seem like an oxymoron but entropy is. Boeing is just doing it's part to help it along.

...and boy are my government inspectors tired!

But how is this a "Boeing issue"? Since this aircraft has been in service for 9 years.

I understand how the world works, but the press coverage of this incident seems to point to some flaw in the Boeing design, when it appears to me to be a SWA maintenance issue.

Indeed, and a relatively minor one at that, roughly equivalent to getting the back knocked off your car's wing mirror.

My suspicion is that some powerful people went short on Boeing at the time of the door blowout, and they have friends in the media to help their position further.

a relatively minor one at that

Unless the cowling smashes into the tail plane, which is exactly what happened here.

If Boeing wasn't in the middle of the door plug issue and hadn't suffered the two MAX crashes due to MCAS then the press attention would be different.

Exactly the same happened with the DC10 early in its life. The type had two cargo door failures (one landed, one crashed) caused by a rather poor design that allowed the door handle to be fully seated even if the locking pins were not properly seated. This very much was McD-D's poor design at the root cause. Then American 191 crashed after an engine ripped off on takeoff. Entirely a maintenance issue, just like this, but this was pretty much the nail in McD-D's coffin as the flying public now saw the DC10 as unsafe.

> nail in McD-D's coffin

So of course Boeing bought them. And here we are.

Indeed! You would have thought that when a successful company merges with a less successful company you would pick the management from the more successful branch....

You might think so, wouldn't you. But, considering that such deals are generally driven by monopsodic investors trying to make even more money by reducing competition, the reverse is usually the case. Look ambitious for saps to take a basket case of your hands by praising its efficiency. Just look at 3i's track record: juicy returns for a couple of years until the wheels, sometimes very literally, start falling off.

Another example, and this from the airline industry: US Airways took over "nobody cuts more corners than we do!" America West, but found their board and C-suite taken over by the nickel-and-dimers. Then much larger American Airlines bought them, and the same thing happened. AA has been Always Awful ever since.

I'm guessing that in this case somebody has failed to secure the cowling after having it open and it has been missed on back up checks. So it's an operational failure rather than a Boeing one and might have happened to any airline with an engine slung under the wing but all the attention is on Boeing after they stopped making robust aircraft.

It is also partly a design issue.

Due to how low the engines are on the 737 you can't see if the cowling is properly secured without pretty much laying on the ground (the clips are on the underside). The 737 was designed 60 years ago and huge turbo fans were not a thing back then.

It is too early to apportion blame but how do you know it *isn't* a Boeing issue? 9 years service is not a long time for a plane and manufacturers have been involved in maintenance for years: lots of juicy after-sales cashflow; as long as nothing goes wrong.

It's also possible to point the finger as SouthWest which is one of those companies that introduced asset-sweating to the airline industry, but this kind of thing was recommended by the same kind of MBAs that convinced Boeing to cut corners cut costs in manufacturing.

Charlie Clark,

We can't know - absent information from the investigation. But engine maintenance happens all the time. Such that a design flaw in how the cowling closes ought to have shown up by now. So the most likely issue on a removable part of a 9 year old aircraft not being secure properly is poor maintenance.

It's still perfectly possible that it's a design flaw. But the automatic linking to Boeing is lazy silly journalism. This isn't like the emergency door plug - which is a part the ailine won't touch until a major maintennace period when they strip the fuselage down. This is something they're going to be taking on and off all the time.

If it was a Airbus, sure they get the benefit of a doubt. But when you have systemic safety and design issues and a culture of profits over sound engineering design (Boeing) it is at best naive to cast it as such.

Also, there's this quote (which could be clarified as to if it is specific to the A/C or the carrier)

"Reuters also pointed out that the FAA might impose engine housing inspections and component replacements on Boeing 737 NG aircraft following a 2018 Southwest Airlines incident."

And this report is not lazy reporting at all; it is stating relevant facts that are known, including that neither Southwest or Boeing have provided responses, and reasonably reporting the status of the investigation. I don't see any slanting or opinion expressed in the article.

>It is too early to apportion blame but how do you know it *isn't* a Boeing issue? 9 years service is not a long time for a plane and manufacturers have been involved in maintenance for years

South West operates 3000-4000 flights / day, there are about 3000 CFM56 engines in service so this could either be somebody forgot to latch a cowling shut on one of them - or a design flaw that took a decade to show up on a component that is opened and closed every day on the worlds most common airliner.

Certainly could be a maintenance issue, or a fastener issue, or maybe a cowling design issue or perhaps something really weird/unusual. How about we wait a while before assigning blame and see what the investigators have to say?

That's what they should rename Boeing (it already sounds like boing). Their planes just seem to bounce from one disaster to the next.

Does that include potential mental trauma?

Not sure how I’d of coped with sitting next to that engine…

If you were sat in the seat nearest the engine then you were probably unaware. The wing would have blocked your view of the engine.

The best view would likely have been from about 3 or 4 rows in front of you looking backwards down the wing.

The article said it struck the "wing flap". Without having seen the video, I find this to be highly likely. With the flaps fully extended for takeoff, the parts are low enough to get hit with a piece of engine cowling. If so, a few rows behind would make the flap damage the most visible to a passenger.

Maybe, but you would have definitely seen the little gremlin on the wing ripping everything apart as the plane passed through the twilight zone.

You mean LATEST failure by Boeing.

Where are the hundreds of millions in fines that they so richly deserve after over a YEAR of "accidents" and "mistakes?"

It's been all Airbus lately, though, so there's no Boing.

I suspect we'll soon see options to pay a premium not to fly Boeing…

If it's Boeing then I'm not going...

Been there, seen that :-( An engine cowling flying off an Airbus on a flight from Nairobi down to Mombassa 25 years ago. The flight staff didn't believe me (a scruffy student) until I insisted they look out of the fekin window. I suppose it wasn't a Boeing so not newsworthy :-)

Back in the day, Kenya Airways had a certain talent for losing new aircraft. It wouldn't put me off flying with them today.

So all you've got is an Airbus incident that is 25 years old.

Compared to the way too many Boeing incidents since the Max was thrust down everyone's throats.

Sorry, I still prefer Airbus.

And our Board is looking into acquiring Airbus planes for added safety.

About living under a flight path and getting a Boeing in instalments

But - much like Boeings quality control team, I can't be arsed..

"Passengers were unharmed and continued their journeys on a different aircraft about three hours later."

An entirely different aircraft or just one more of the same?