United grounds Boeing 777s after engine failure incident

United Airlines has grounded all its Boeing 777s after an engine failure on one of these planes forced a flight to return to Denver Airport shortly after takeoff.

CNN’s Pete Muntean and Alaa Elassar reported:

United Airlines is removing all of its Boeing 777 planes currently in service that are powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000 series engines after the Federal Aviation Administration called for stepped-up inspections.

The airline announced Sunday it was immediately removing the planes “out of an abundance of caution.” The 24 aircraft are part of the 52 777s in the United fleet. The other 28 remain in storage.

The move is voluntary and temporary, United said, and should disrupt only “a small number of customers.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Alison Sider and Andrew Tangel noted:

Boeing Co. BA 4.31% on Sunday told airlines to stop flying its wide-body 777 aircraft equipped with a type of engine that broke apart during a flight over the weekend near Denver, as the Federal Aviation Administration said it would order immediate inspections of those jets.

Boeing’s recommendation followed action by regulators in the U.S. and Japan aimed at the Pratt & Whitney engines found on 128 of its 777s. The United Airlines Holdings Inc. flight Saturday was the third failure involving that model plane with those engines in recent years.

Jamie Freed and David Shepardson from Reuters wrote:

The manufacturer recommended airlines suspend operating them until U.S. regulators identified the appropriate inspection protocol.

It falls short of a mandatory global grounding but is another headache for the plane maker after its 737 MAX crisis and comes after criticism of U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversight regarding the 737 MAX.