An Air Greenland helicopter crew has recovered some of the engine debris of the Air France Airbus A380 Flight AF66, that experienced an...
An Air Greenland helicopter crew has recovered some of the engine debris of the Air France Airbus A380 Flight AF66, that experienced an in-flight uncontained engine explosion over the Greenland on September 30.
The recovered parts of the Engine Alliane GP7200 engine have been given to the Danish Accident Investigation Board (AIB DK) and are being routed to the French aviation accident investigation agency BEA.
The recovered debris include engine cowl sections and fan blades.
A forthcoming mission will recover other parts and try to localize missing parts, and will be set up when meteorological conditions permit. The snow that is covering progressively the debris might make their detection and retrieval harder.
The data contained in the flight data recorder (FDR) was used to determine the place of occurrence of the failure that occurred during the cruise to the Airbus A380's engine number 4 and to demarcate a search area to find the parts that were separated.
The uncontained explosion caused the Airbus A380, registered F-HPJE, to lose one of its four engine during cruise over Greenland, after its Engine forward cowl and engine fan were seperated, exposing the Low Pressure Compressor of the engine.
The aircraft carrying more than 500 people, was diverted to Goose bay military airport in Canada, were it landed safely approximately one and half hour after the incident.
