Passengers on a United Airlines Flight bound to Honolulu from Colorado were met with engine troubles at the start of their flight when the engine exploded causing debris to land in the surrounding Broomfield area for a mile around.

For someone who’s afraid of flying this is a person’s worst nightmare. An engine exploding during a flight is never something that should happen. CNN Opinion writer Les Abend, who’s also a retired Boeing-777 captain stated that the preliminary findings found that the most likely culprit for the engine failure was a fan blade coming loose. This is known as a catastrophic failure when the engine internally comes apart and as a result “Causing major damage — enough that the engine no longer produces functional thrust,” and uncontained because pieces of the engine are falling off. 

However, this begs the question for United Airlines on how maintenance missed this and why they continue to use an engine that is known to have past incidents. USA Today reports that it’s only the US planes that have this engine. United Airlines also tweeted that they were “Voluntarily & temporarily removing 24 Boeing 777 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines from our schedule” and improving inspections by focusing on the fan blades. Abend’s article goes in-depth as the steps a flight crew takes when an issue comes up.

Fortunately, this catastrophic failure occurred two minutes into the flight rather than over the ocean and they were able to return safely to the airport. Videos show the engine shaking and in flames and smoke billowing out. There’s also audio from the pilot’s mayday call saying that there’s heavy engine failure and that they need to turn around immediately. However, once the plane was grounded the passengers cheered for a safe landing. It’s an understandable reaction in a terrifying situation and were fortunate that they were able to return to the airport instead of somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

In an article by Eric Levenson for CNN, Travis Loock who was sitting near the engine described it as “A big boom and the kind of sound you don’t want to hear when you’re on the airplane,” and another passenger Mike Vena feared that they wouldn’t see their kids again. 

Pictures of debris show engine pieces in people’s yards in Broomfield, Colorado. One person reported debris crashing through the roof while they were making a sandwich. No reports seem to suggest that anyone was hurt by the falling debris. A lucky fact considering the  pieces of metal could have seriously hurt somebody down on the ground. 

The flight attendants should also be recognized for a great job done. They didn’t make a scene and kept people calm rather than raising alarms. The simulations that pilots go through were beneficial because it seems that they acted quickly and appropriately and kept everyone safe. Despite some passengers not being aware, those who were and could visibly see the engine didn’t make an enormous scene and freaked out the other passengers on the plane despite being in a scary situation, some even continuing on their path to Honolulu.