An American Airlines Boeing 767-300 suffered a rare uncontained engine failure during the take-off run at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on 28th October. The 161 passengers and nine crewmembers onboard were safely evacuated.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the aircraft experienced an uncontained failure of the right GE CF6-80C2B6 engine about 6,550ft from runway 28R threshold, and came to a full stop about 9,225ft from runway 28R threshold.

Preliminary FDR data show that the right engine failure occurred at an airspeed of about 128 knots with the engine operating at takeoff power.

As a result of the failure, a fuel leak resulted in a pool fire under the right wing. Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting personnel began applying foam within 2 minutes 51 seconds of being notified of the emergency.

The incident was due to a failure in the engine core. The right engine stage 2 high pressure turbine disk fractured into at least 4 pieces. One piece went through the inboard section of the right wing, over the fuselage and into a UPS warehouse facility 1km away. The majority of the disk has been recovered and sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, DC for examination. According to the NTSB, one of the fractures exhibits features consistent with fatigue cracking initiating at an internal inclusion near the forward side of the hub’s inner bore.

The disk had 10,984 cycles and had a life limit of 15,000 cycles. Review of the engine maintenance and manufacturing records and processes is ongoing. It is reported to be the first-ever failure of a stage 2 HP turbine disk on a CF6-80 engine, though there have been a small number of incidents involving the stage 1 disk.