Engine Alliance and Airbus have joined France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) in the investigation into an engine failure aboard and Air France A380 flying from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday. Air France Flight AF066, carrying 497 passengers, landed safely at Canada’s Goose Bay Airport at 1542 GMT following the incident, which occurred over southern Greenland at 37,000 feet as the A380 traversed the Atlantic Ocean. “The regularly trained pilots and cabin crew handled this serious incident perfectly,” Air France said in a statement.
Photographs taken by passengers from inside the A380 and circulated on the Internet showed the front cowling and fan disc of the A380’s Number 4 engine had broken apart.
Engine Alliance—the 50-50 joint venture between Pratt & Whitney and GE Aviation that supplied the GP7200 turbofan that failed in flight—posted a message on its Twitter account acknowledging its cooperation with investigative authorities and referencing the Air France Twitter feed for more information.
Air France said it arranged for two flights to get the passengers stranded in Goose Bay to Los Angeles. One—a specially leased Boeing 737—flew to LAX after a stop in Winnipeg. The other—an Air France 777-300—flew to Atlanta, from where alliance partner Delta Air Lines arranged to shuttle the rest of the passengers to Los Angeles on another specially leased flight.