Alvorlig flyuhell - Uncontained engine failure over Frankrike - Curt Lewis

Incident: Baltic BCS3 near Bordeaux on Feb 12th 2020, uncontained engine failure

An Air Baltic Bombardier C-Series CS-300, registration YL-AAU performing flight BT-677 from Riga (Latvia) to Malaga,SP (Spain), was enroute at FL390 about 80nm south of Bordeaux (France) when the left hand engine (PW1500G) suffered an uncontained failure and was shut down. The crew diverted the aircraft to Bordeaux where the aircraft landed safely on runway 23 about 25 minutes after leaving FL390. The airline reported the captain shut the left hand engine down and diverted to Bordeaux. A replacement aircraft is dispatched to take the passengers to Malaga. A replacement CS-300 registration YL-AAV was dispatched to Bordeaux and resumed the flight. The aircraft is curently enroute at FL290 and is estimated to reach Malage with a delay of 8 hours. The French BEA reported the left hand engine suffered a technical failure, the aircraft diverted to Bordeaux. The occurence was rated a serious incident and has been delegated to the US NTSB, who are already investigating three occurrences of the same type that Swiss had suffered in 2019, see Incident: Swiss BCS3 near Paris on Jul 25th 2019, engine shut down in flight, Incident: Swiss BCS3 near Geneva on Sep 16th 2019, uncontained engine failure and Incident: Swiss BCS3 near Paris on Oct 15th 2019, engine shut down in flight. In all three cases of Swiss the affected engine had suffered the uncontained release of the stage 1 low pressure compressor rotor. As result of the occurrences in 2019 the FAA had released Air Worthiness Directive 2019-19-11 and Transport Canada had released Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) CF-2019-37, the latter limiting the N1 setting to 94% above FL290, which requires the autothrust to be disengaged in order to respect that limit. According to Mode-S Data transmitted by the aircraft the aircraft had been enroute for about 4 hours and had done several climbing and descending changes in flight levels. Near Bordeaux the aircraft had been enroute at FL370 then climbed to FL390 and had been level at FL390 for about 2 minutes when the engine failure occurred. The engine (Photo: Aerotelegraph):