Air France Flight 066

Air France

Industry	Airline
Founded	October 7, 1933 (1933-10-07)
Headquarters	Paris , France
Products	Air transportation services
Website	www.airfrance.com

Air France Flight 066 operated as a scheduled international route connecting Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport with Los Angeles International Airport, utilizing an Airbus A380-861 aircraft managed by Air France. On 30 September 2017, while cruising approximately 150 kilometers southeast of Paamiut, Greenland, the plane suffered an uncontained failure of its Engine Alliance GP7200 engine. This malfunction caused the fan hub and intake section to detach from the rightmost outboard engine, necessitating an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport in Canada.

The French investigative authority, Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA), published its findings in September 2020, attributing the failure to a crack in the fan hub induced by "cold dwell" metal fatigue. This event represented the second recorded uncontained engine failure on an Airbus A380, following a similar incident involving a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on Qantas Flight 32 in 2010.

Engine failure

Following the engine malfunction on the number 4 engine—the outermost engine on the right wing—the aircraft diverted to CFB Goose Bay, a military airfield that also serves some civilian flights. It touched down at 15:42 UTC (12:42 local time), roughly southeast of Paamiut, Greenland. At the time of failure, the engine had accumulated 30,769 flight hours and 3,534 cycles from cold startup to operational temperature.

Among the 497 passengers and 24 crew members aboard, no injuries or fatalities occurred. Due to limited passenger processing capabilities at Goose Bay Airport for large international flights, passengers remained on board overnight until 1 October. Air France arranged onward transportation via two flights: a Boeing 777 to Atlanta and a chartered Boeing 737 flying directly to Los Angeles with a refueling stop in Winnipeg.

Passengers documented the damaged engine and emergency landing through photos and videos shared on social media platforms, generating widespread public interest.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a seven-year-old Airbus A380-861 (registration F-HPJE, MSN 052), equipped with four Engine Alliance GP7200 turbofan engines. Its maiden flight occurred on 10 August 2010, followed by delivery to Air France on 17 May 2011. By the time of the incident, it had logged 27,184 total flight hours. After undergoing repairs, the aircraft returned to service on 15 January 2018 but was subsequently retired in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 2021, it had been returned to its lessor, Dr. Peters Group, and was placed in storage at Tarbes–Lourdes–Pyrénées Airport.

Investigation

Air France launched an inquiry that included participation from the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), Airbus, and Air France representatives. Although the Transportation Safety Board of Canada intended to assist, jurisdiction rested with the Danish Accident Investigation Board since the incident occurred over Greenland's airspace. On 3 October 2017, Denmark delegated investigative responsibility to the BEA, supported by experts from Denmark, the United States, Canada, Airbus, Air France, and Engine Alliance.

Preliminary investigation revealed that during flight, the fan hub separated from the engine along with its air inlet assembly. Debris was located in Greenland six days after the event. The BEA highlighted that recovering fragments of the fan hub was critical and undertook extensive search operations using synthetic-aperture radar and airborne geophysical sensors throughout 2018 and 2019.

In July 2019, nearly two years after the incident, a significant engine component weighing approximately 150 kilograms was extracted from a Greenland crevasse following prolonged search efforts employing ice-penetrating radar technology. This recovery operation was documented in the film "The Sky Detectives."

The BEA’s conclusive report released in September 2020 determined that cold dwell fatigue cracking within the Ti-6-4 alloy fan hub was responsible for triggering the engine failure.

Subsequent action

On October 12, 2017, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) applicable to all Engine Alliance GP7270, GP7272, and GP7277 engines. This directive required a visual inspection of the fan hub to be completed within a timeframe of two to eight weeks, contingent on the number of engine cycles. Later, in June 2018, the FAA mandated eddy-current inspections of GP7200 fan hubs to identify any cracks present in the blade attachment slots.

In August 2019, the BEA disclosed that a fan hub component recovered from Greenland underwent metallurgical analysis conducted by Engine Alliance under BEA oversight. The titanium piece exhibited a subsurface fatigue fracture originating from a microtextured region located at the bottom of the slot. Subsequently, Engine Alliance notified A380 operators impacted by this issue about a forthcoming engine inspection initiative.

Recovery and repair

Initially, Air France intended to reposition the aircraft back to Europe with a non-functional replacement engine installed solely for weight and balance considerations. This approach necessitated specialized procedures and crew training in simulators. However, this strategy was altered, and on December 6, 2017, the aircraft was ferried from Goose Bay Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport powered by four fully functional engines and piloted by Air France personnel. The damaged engine underwent examination by General Electric at East Midlands Airport between November 23 and 25, 2017.

The aircraft resumed operations on January 15, 2018, continuing service until Air France retired its A380 fleet in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 crisis. Its last journey was on April 28 from Charles de Gaulle to Tarbes-Lourdes Airport as flight AF371V. The plane is currently stored there alongside other decommissioned A380s. In June 2021, it received a new registration as 9H-AIY under ownership of the German investment company Dr. Peters Group.

The fan hub was successfully retrieved from the Greenland ice sheet over June 29–30, 2019, following twenty months and four stages of intricate aerial and terrestrial search operations aimed at locating engine fragments.