Air France Flight 066 was a scheduled international passenger flight from

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, ), also known as Roissy Airport or simply Paris CDG, is the principal airport serving the French capital, Paris ( and its metropolitan area), and the largest intern ...

Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the ...

, operated by

Air France Air France (; formally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global a ...

and using an Airbus A380-861. On 30 September 2017, the aircraft suffered an

uncontained engine failure A turbine engine failure occurs when a turbine engine unexpectedly stops producing power due to a malfunction other than fuel exhaustion. It often applies for aircraft, but other turbine engines can fail, like ground-based turbines used in powe ...

and made an

emergency landing An emergency landing is a premature landing made by an aircraft in response to an emergency involving an imminent or ongoing threat to the safety and operation of the aircraft, or involving a sudden need for a passenger or crew on board to term ...

at Goose Bay Airport, Canada. The outboard right-side

Engine Alliance GP7000 The Engine Alliance GP7000 is a turbofan jet engine manufactured by Engine Alliance, a joint venture between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney. It is one of the powerplant options available for the Airbus A380, along with the Rolls-Royce Tren ...

engine failed and its fan hub and intake separated southeast of Paamiut, Greenland, while the aircraft was in cruise flight. A crack in the fan hub had been caused by metal fatigue. This was the second uncontained engine failure suffered by an Airbus A380, following that of a

Rolls-Royce Trent 900 The Rolls-Royce Trent 900 is a high-bypass turbofan produced by Rolls-Royce plc to power the Airbus A380, competing with the Engine Alliance GP7000. Initially proposed for the Boeing 747-500/600X in July 1996, this first application was late ...

engine on Qantas Flight 32 in 2010.

Engine failure

The aircraft diverted to

CFB Goose Bay Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay , commonly referred to as CFB Goose Bay, is a Canadian Forces Base located in the municipality of Happy Valley-Goose Bay in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is operated as an air force base by ...

, a military air base also used for civilian flights, and landed at 15:42 UTC (12:42 local time) after suffering an

uncontained failure A turbine engine failure occurs when a turbine engine unexpectedly stops producing power due to a malfunction other than fuel exhaustion. It often applies for aircraft, but other turbine engines can fail, like ground-based turbines used in powe ...

on its number 4 (rightmost) engine while flying southeast of Paamiut, Greenland. The engine had operated 3,527 cycles at the time of the incident. There were no reported injuries or fatalities among the 497 passengers and 24 crew on board. Passengers were not allowed to disembark from the A380 until another Air France aircraft and a chartered aircraft arrived the next morning (1 October), because the airport (located on a

Royal Canadian Air Force The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; french: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air and space force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower". The RCAF is one of three environm ...

base) is not equipped to accommodate a large number of international passengers from commercial aircraft. The

aircraft (a

Boeing 777 The Boeing 777, commonly referred to as the Triple Seven, is an American long-range wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It is the world's largest twinjet. The 777 was designed to bridge the gap betw ...

) landed at Atlanta, requiring a wait for its passengers to board another flight while the chartered

Boeing 737 The Boeing 737 is a narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Renton Factory in Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the twinjet retains the 707 fuselage width and six abreast seating with two u ...

aircraft took passengers directly to Los Angeles with a refuelling stopover at Winnipeg. Pictures and video of the damaged engine were posted to social media by passengers; and of the landing by an observer on the ground.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a 7-year-old Airbus A380-861,

registration Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

F-HPJE with the

Manufacturer's Serial Number A serial number is a unique identifier assigned incrementally or sequentially to an item, to ''uniquely'' identify it. Serial numbers need not be strictly numerical. They may contain letters and other typographical symbols, or may consist ent ...

MSN 052, powered by four

turbofan engines, having made its first flight on 10 August 2010, and was delivered to Air France on 17 May 2011. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had accumulated a total of 27,184 flight hours. Eventually, the aircraft was repaired and went back to service on 15 January 2018, but was later retired in May 2020 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. As of June 2021, the aircraft has been returned to its lessor, the Dr. Peters Group, and is being stored at

Tarbes–Lourdes–Pyrénées Airport Tarbes–Lourdes–Pyrénées Airport (french: Aéroport Tarbes Lourdes Pyrénées; ) is an airport 9 km south-southwest of Tarbes in the Hautes-Pyrénées ''département'' of France. Operations It handles scheduled and charter flights fr ...

Investigation

Air France issued a press release stating that an investigation was underway to determine the cause of the engine failure, including representatives of the

Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety The Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA, ) is an agency of the French government, responsible for investigating aviation accidents and incidents and making safety recommendations based on what is learned from those inve ...

(BEA, the French aviation accident investigation bureau),

Airbus Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...

and Air France. The

Transportation Safety Board of Canada The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB, french: Bureau de la sécurité des transports du Canada, BST), officially the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board (french: link=no, Bureau canadien d'enquête sur les ...

is responsible for investigating aviation accidents in Canada and planned to send investigators. However, since the incident occurred over Greenland, the Danish Accident Investigation Board has jurisdiction over the investigation. On 3 October 2017 the Danish aviation authorities delegated the investigation to the BEA. Investigators from Denmark, the US and Canada joined the investigation. Advisors from Airbus, Air France and

Engine Alliance The Engine Alliance (EA) is an American aircraft engine manufacturer based in East Hartford, Connecticut. The company is a 50/50 joint venture between GE Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electric, and Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of Raytheon ...

(a partnership between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney) also flew to Goose Bay. The first observation was that the engine's fan hub had detached during the flight and dragged the air inlet with it. Some six days later, debris from the aircraft's engine was recovered in Greenland. The BEA stated that "the recovery of the missing parts, especially of the fan hub fragments, was the key to supporting the investigation" and initiated a large search operation including

synthetic-aperture radar Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target region to provide fin ...

overflights on a

Dassault Falcon 20 The Dassault Falcon 20 is a French business jet developed and manufactured by Dassault Aviation. The first business jet developed by the firm, it became the first of a family of business jets to be produced under the same name; of these, both t ...

, but failed to locate the crucial components in 2018, before returning in 2019. In July 2019, another missing piece of the engine, weighing , was located in Greenland and recovered. The fan hub impact is believed to have made a small crater in the ice sheet that quickly filled with snow before initial search activities. The search and recovery for this missing fan hub took almost two years, with multiple search campaigns using different ice-penetrating radar and transient electromagnetic anomaly technologies. It was ultimately recovered from 4 m depth in a large crevasse field. This search and recovery campaign was featured in the documentary "The Sky Detectives". The BEA released its final report in September 2020, indicating that the engine failed from a crack in the Ti-6-4 alloy fan hub caused by cold dwell fatigue cracking.

Subsequent action

On 12 October 2017, the American

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

(FAA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) affecting all Engine Alliance GP7270, GP7272 and GP7277 engines. The EAD required a visual inspection of the fan hub within a timescale of two to eight weeks, depending on the number of cycles an engine had operated since new. In June 2018 the FAA issued another

Airworthiness Directive An Airworthiness Directive (commonly abbreviated as AD) is a notification to owners and operators of certified aircraft that a known safety deficiency with a particular model of aircraft, engine, avionics or other system exists and must be correct ...

, requiring

eddy-current testing Eddy-current testing (also commonly seen as eddy current testing and ECT) is one of many electromagnetic testing methods used in nondestructive testing (NDT) making use of electromagnetic induction to detect and characterize surface and sub-surfa ...

of the fan hubs of GP7000 engines, to check for cracks in the slots in the hub that serve to attach the fan blades. In August 2019, the BEA announced that a part from the fan hub recovered from Greenland had been examined by the manufacturer Engine Alliance under BEA supervision. Metallurgical examination of the recovered titanium fan hub fragment identified a subsurface fatigue crack origin. The fracture was initiated in a microtextured area approximately in the middle of the slot bottom. Examination of the fracture was ongoing. Meanwhile, Engine Alliance informed affected A380 operators that an engine inspection campaign would be launched soon.

Recovery and repair

Air France originally announced plans to ferry the aircraft back to Europe for repair, with an inoperable replacement engine installed, for reasons of weight and balance. Such a flight requires special operating procedures, and thus rehearsal by the crew in a

simulator A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

. That plan was revised and the aircraft was ferried back from Goose Bay Airport to

Charles de Gaulle Airport Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, ), also known as Roissy Airport or simply Paris CDG, is the principal airport serving the French capital, Paris ( and its metropolitan area), and the largest inter ...

on 6 December 2017 using four operational engines and an Air France crew. The damaged engine was flown to

East Midlands Airport East Midlands Airport is an international airport in the East Midlands of England, close to Castle Donington in northwestern Leicestershire, between Loughborough (), Derby () and Nottingham (); Leicester is () to the south and Lincoln () ...

in the United Kingdom for examination by General Electric during the period 23–25 November 2017. The aircraft returned to service on 15 January 2018. However, Air France retired its A380 fleet in May 2020, due to the

. F-HPJE's final flight was on 28 April from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Tarbes-Lourdes Airport as AF371V. The aircraft is stored there along with two other Air France A380s and three former

Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines ( abbreviation: SIA) is the flag carrier airline of the Republic of Singapore with its hub located at Singapore Changi Airport. The airline is notable for highlighting the Singapore Girl as its central figure in corporat ...

A380s. In June 2021, the aircraft was re-registered as 9H-AIY by German-based investment firm Dr. Peters Group. Recovery of the fan hub from the Greenland ice sheet took place on 29–30 June 2019 after 20 months and four phases of complex aerial and ground search operations to locate the various elements from the engine., retrieved 2019-08-13

References