Shortly after midnight, a Transcarga International Airways Airbus A300-B4 freighter rejected takeoff from Bogotá following an uncontained engine failure. Initial reports say that the engine’s rotor disk ejected, sending pieces of metal onto a neighboring road. The pilots brought the plane to a standstill, and no one was injured as a result.
Loud explosion prompted rejection
The 37-year old aircraft, with registration YV560T, was operating Flight T9-1527 from Bogotá, Colombia, to Caracas, Venezuela, when its left-hand General Electric CF6 engine suffered an uncontained failure. It was accelerating along El Dorado International Airport’s runway 31L at 00:30 local time, when there was a loud explosion.
As reported by the Aviation Herald, the cockpit crew rejected takeoff and brought the aircraft safely to a standstill. However, a large metallic piece flew onto a neighboring road, right at the crossing of Calle 63 and Carrera 103. By a stroke of luck, it missed a motorcyclist by ten meters.
This places it in good company with the high-profile United Boeing 777 engine failure over suburbs in Denver and the Longtail Aviation 747 freighter that dropped parts of an engine onto the Dutch town of Meerssen just two days apart from each other.
Thankfully, there was no injury to life or limb as a result of either. However, a passenger from United’s Flight UA328 is bringing a class-action lawsuit against the airline for emotional distress.
Ejected rotor disk
Initial investigations by Colombia’s Grupo de Investigación de Accidentes Aéreos (GRIAA) on the scene stated that the rotor disc had been ejected from the engine. It then crashed through a runway safety mesh and crashed into the door of a building in an area adjacent to the aircraft, again without causing any injuries. An investigation to determine the causes of the incident is ongoing. The aircraft remains on the ground in Bogotá.
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Transcarga International Airways
Transcarga International Airways is a cargo carrier based at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela. The airline was founded in 1998 by Julio Marquez Biaggi, a former pilot from Viasa and KLM, but did not commence operations until 2001.
It operates a fleet of two Airbus A300B4s, with an average age of 37.5 years. The carrier provides its services to larger operators, such as Servicio Panamericano de Proteccion, DHL, FedEx, and UPS, among others. It has also operated Embraer 120s and general aviation Piper Navajos.
In the weeks leading up to the incident, according to flight data, YV560T had been journeying mostly between Caracas, Bogotá, and Panama City but had also made a transatlantic hop to Valencia in Spain.
What do you make of an entire rotor disk ejecting from an engine? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think of the incident.