US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - poor old N654US :(

Before parking my car at the Suncoast lot(just West of the airport on Rt. 291, right next to USAirways new maintenance hangar), she caught my eye. You can't miss it if you approach the airport from the South on I-95 and then get off at the Rt. 291/Airport exit.

Sitting a stones through from the roadway, only seperated by a fence, the engine-less 767 sat all dark and gloomy. The story behind the whole thing has been posted time and again(catastrophic engine failure at run-up, major damage to wing and fuselage), but to see it sitting there with BOTH engines removed brought a tear to my eye.

Next to it, however, sat a new A321! Engines were running and workers were coming in and out of it. I guess it's about to go into service.

To those of you unfamiliar with this aircraft, the "left engine experienced an uncontained catastrophic failure" in PHL.

The good thing is that it happened while on the ground. You can see pictures of the aftermath at: http://www.avweb.com/articles/gobad/

Saw this bird as my old colleague was driving me to his business in Tinicum last week (but at night). You're looking at the starboard side from the road and so can't really see the damage on the port side.

Does anyone know what happened? Someone left something in the engine?

Actually, it was some type of failure within the engine - may have been a problem with the turbine blades - and could have been there for a bit. US's mechanics had nothing to do with the failure - rather they had everything to do with the fact that the situation was not any worse. From what I've read on PlaneBusiness' board (http://www.planebusiness.com/cgi-bin/ultimate.cgi) without the mecanics, there would have been no chance to save the plane (now looks like it's toast). 654 has been deleted from US's last fleet report in one of it's SEC filings - and Boeing may not have been able to build a new wing assembly for it. Plus there was some damage to the fuselage - the type that may have made pressurization an interesting experience.

If this had happened in flight - it would have meant a major loss of life. So, we're all lucky in that regard.

GE and Boeing were taking a good look at the situation - since they're dealing with an older 767-200 that was heavily utilized. It doesn't appear to be a systemic problem with the engine type. Don't know what they've found.

For more info - see the US forum on PlaneBusiness.

[This message has been edited by CLTFlyer (edited 01-25-2001).]

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[This message has been edited by CLTFlyer (edited 01-25-2001).]