Officials at United Airlines say the carrier will at some point resume flying its Pratt & Whitney-powered Boeing 777-200 jets, which were grounded two months ago after one of the plane’s engines malfunctioned and caught fire in flight.
During a conference call with analysts Tuesday, Jon Roitman, United’s chief operating officer, said the company has been working closely with Pratt, Boeing, and the Federal Aviation Administration with the aim of “getting that aircraft back to safe operations in the future.”
Asked when specifically the fleet could return to service, Roitman said it was “just too premature” to provide exact dates.
“I’ll just tell you that, again, we’ve had really productive collaboration, and there’s progress,” he said.
The FAA ordered inspections of all Boeing 777s using Pratt & Whitney’s PW4000 series engines on Feb. 22, two days after one of the engines partially disintegrated on a United flight from Denver to Honolulu. No one was injured, but the mechanical failure did cause debris to rain down on suburban areas around Denver.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident. In a preliminary report, NTSB officials said two of the engine’s fan blades had fractured, likely due to metal fatigue.
Similar fan blade cracks have been reported in other instances of PW4000 engine failures, including one aboard United Airlines Flight 1175 in 2018, in which the plane’s right engine blew off its protective cover and produced violent shaking in the airframe. The flight crew landed the plane safely, and no one was injured.
Issues involving the PW4000 ultimately prompted Japan Airlines, Japan’s flag carrier, to retire all of its Pratt-powered Boeing 777s one year earlier than scheduled.
Since the grounded Boeing jets owned by United are on the older side, having been introduced in the 1990s, there was some speculation that the company would follow Japan’s lead and phase out the aircraft.