Regulators to require inspections after jet engine explosion

U.S. airline regulators said Wednesday they will order inspections on engine fan blades like the one that snapped off and triggered a fatal accident on a Southwest Airlines jet.

A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

The move by the Federal Aviation Administration comes nearly a year after the engine manufacturer recommended the additional inspections, and a month after European regulators ordered their airlines to do the work.

Pressure for the FAA to act grew after an engine on a Southwest jet blew apart Tuesday, showering the plane with debris and shattering a window. A woman sitting next to the window died of her injuries. The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.

Federal investigators said a blade that broke off in mid-flight was showing signs of metal fatigue — microscopic cracks that can splinter open under the kind of stress placed on jetliners and their engines.

The engine on a Southwest Airlines plane is inspected as it sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Amanda Bourman via AP)

In this 2017 photo, Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, N.M., poses for a photo in Albuquerque. Family, friends and community leaders are mourning the death of Riordan, a bank executive on a Southwest Airlines jet that blew an engine as she was flying home from a business trip to New York. (Marla Brose/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

The National Transportation Safety Board also blamed metal fatigue in preliminary findings after an engine broke apart on another Southwest Boeing 737 over Florida in 2016.

That led engine manufacturer CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France's Safran SA, to recommend last June that airlines conduct the inspections of fan blades on many Boeing 737s.

The FAA proposed making the recommendation mandatory in August but never issued a final decision.

In a brief statement late Wednesday, an FAA official said the agency will issue an order in the next two weeks to require ultrasonic inspection of fan blades on some CFM56-7B engines after they reach a certain number of takeoffs and landings. Blades that fail will have to be replaced, the agency said.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators examine damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia on Tuesday, April 17, 2018.  (NTSB via AP)

In this Tuesday, April 17, 2018 photo, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia.  (NTSB via AP)

It is not clear how many planes will be affected. Last year, the FAA estimated that an order would cover 220 engines on U.S. airlines. That number could be higher now because more engines have hit the number of flights triggering an inspection.

Southwest announced its own program for similar inspections of its 700-plane fleet over the next month. United Airlines executives said Wednesday that they had begun to inspect some of their planes.

American Airlines has about 300 planes with that type of engine, and Delta Air Lines has about 185. It won't be clear until the FAA issues its rule how many will need inspections.

In this Tuesday, April 17, 2018 frame from video, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia.  (NTSB via AP)

In this Tuesday, April 17, 2018 frame from video, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia.(NTSB via AP)

Tuesday's accident broke a string of eight straight years without a fatal accident involving a U.S. passenger airliner.

"Engine failures like this should not occur," said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt.

Sumwalt expressed concern about such a destructive engine failure but said he would not yet draw broad conclusions about the safety of CFM56 engines or the entire fleet of Boeing 737s, the most popular airliner ever built.

Federal investigators were still trying to determine how a window came out of the plane. The woman sitting next to the window was wearing a seat belt, but passengers said she was partially blown out of the plane. Philadelphia's medical examiner said she died from blunt impact to her head, neck and torso.

In this Tuesday, April 17, 2018 frame from video, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia. (NTSB via AP)

In this April 17, 2018 photo provided by Marty Martinez, Martinez appears with other passengers after a jet engine blew out on the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 plane he was flying in from New York to Dallas, resulting in the death of a woman who was nearly sucked from a window during the flight with 149 people aboard.(Marty Martinez via AP)

Family members identified her as 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan, a banking executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The pilots began a harrowing descent and made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Investigators said the plane landed at an unusually high speed because the pilots feared losing control if they flew slower.

The leading edge of the left wing was damaged by shrapnel from the engine explosion.

It is unclear whether the FAA's original directive would have forced Southwest to quickly inspect the engine that blew up. CEO Gary Kelly said it had logged only 10,000 cycles since being overhauled.

This April 17, 2018 photo provided by Marty Martinez shows the window that was shattered after a jet engine of a Southwest Airlines airplane blew out at altitude, resulting in the death of a woman who was nearly sucked from the window during the flight of the Boeing 737 bound from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard, shown after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. (Marty Martinez via AP)

This April 17, 2018 photo provided by Marty Martinez shows the window that was shattered after a jet engine of a Southwest Airlines airplane blew out at altitude, resulting in the death of a woman who was nearly sucked from the window during the flight of the Boeing 737 bound from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard, after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. (Marty Martinez via AP)

Before Wednesday's announcement, critics accused the FAA of inaction in the face of a threat to safety.

Robert Clifford, a lawyer who is suing American Airlines over another engine explosion that caused a fire that destroyed the plane, said the FAA should have required the inspections — even if it meant grounding Boeing 737s.

"There is something going on with these engines," he said, "and the statistical likelihood of additional failures exists."

In this April 17, 2018 photo provided by Marty Martinez, Martinez, left, appears with other passengers after a jet engine blew out on the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 plane he was flying in from New York to Dallas, resulting in the death of a woman who was nearly sucked from a window during the flight with 149 people aboard.  (Marty Martinez via AP)

William Waldock, a safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, predicted the FAA's decision. He said the scope of FAA action will depend on whether investigators find fatigue in other fan blades on the broken engine.

"The first thing they probably are going to do is pull every single one of those other blades off and X-ray them to see if they've got a similar type of failure waiting to happen," he said.

The Southwest CEO protested that it is too soon to say whether Tuesday's incident is related to any other engine failures.

Kelly said the plane was inspected on Sunday and nothing appeared out of order. A spokeswoman said it was a visual inspection and oil service of the engines. The NTSB's Sumwalt said, however, that the kind of wear seen where the missing fan blade broke off would not have been visible just by looking at the engine.

There are several types of inspections that planes must go through, ranging from an "A check," which is done about every eight to 10 weeks, to more-rigorous B, C and D checks.

So-called D checks are done roughly every six years for older planes, less frequently for newer ones. It can take weeks and involves taking apart much of the plane for inspection and possible repair or replacement of parts, then putting it back together. Engines are typically removed for work during a D check.

Southwest declined to provide the plane's maintenance records to The Associated Press, but a spokeswoman said that the failed engine had experienced no unscheduled maintenance in the last 60 days.

NTSB investigators plan to visit Southwest headquarters in Dallas next week to inspect maintenance records, Sumwalt said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether doctors can provide abortions to pregnant women with medical emergencies in states that enact abortion bans.

The Justice Department has sued Idaho over its abortion law, which only allows a woman to get an abortion when her life — not her health — is at risk. The state law has raised questions about when a doctor is able to provide the stabilizing treatment that federal law requires.

The federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires doctors to stabilize or treat any patient who shows up at an emergency room.

Here’s a look at the history of EMTALA, what rights it provides patients and how a Supreme Court ruling might change that.

Simply put, EMTALA requires emergency rooms to offer a medical exam if you present at their facility. The law applies to nearly all emergency rooms – any that accept Medicare funding.

Those emergency rooms are required to stabilize patients if they do have a medical emergency before discharging or transferring them. And if the emergency room doesn’t have the resources or staff to properly treat that patient, staff are required to arrange a medical transfer to another hospital, after they’ve confirmed the facility can accept the patient.

So, for example, if a pregnant woman shows up at an emergency room concerned that she is in labor but there is no OB/GYN on staff, hospital staff cannot simply direct the woman to go elsewhere.

Look to Chicago in the early 1980s.

Doctors at the city’s public hospital were confronting a huge problem: thousands of patients, many of them Black or Latino, were arriving in very bad condition – and they were sent there by private hospitals in the city who refused to treat them. Most of them did not have health insurance.

Chicago wasn’t alone. Doctors working in public hospitals around the country reported similar issues. Media reports, including one of a pregnant woman who delivered a stillborn baby after being turned away by two hospitals because she didn’t have insurance, intensified public pressure on politicians to act.

Congress drafted legislation with Republican Sen. David Durenberger of Minnesota saying at the time, “Americans, rich or poor, deserve access to quality health care. This question of access should be the government’s responsibility at the federal, state, and local levels.”

Then President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1986.

The hospital is investigated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If they find the hospital violated a patient’s right to care, they can lose their Medicare funding, a vital source of revenue for most hospitals to keep their doors open.

Usually, however, the federal government issues fines when a hospital violates EMTALA. They can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly reminded hospitals that his administration considers an abortion part of the stabilizing care that EMTALA requires facilities to provide.

The administration argues that Idaho’s law prevents ER doctors from offering an abortion if a woman needs one in a medical emergency.

But Idaho’s attorney general has pointed out that EMTALA also requires hospitals to consider the health of the “unborn child” in its treatment, too.

Anti-abortion advocates argue that state laws banning abortion can co-exist with the federal law that requires hospitals to stabilize pregnant patients in an emergency.

The prominent anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday that all 50 states offer life-saving care to women. The group responded to an AP article that found pregnancy-related EMTALA complaints spiked in some states with strict abortion bans in 2022.

“This is not a red state-blue state issue, this is a nationwide need for better emergency care for women and their unborn children,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the group’s state public affairs director. “EMTALA clearly requires care for both patients.”

But many doctors say it’s not as clear cut as anti-abortion advocates claim. Idaho’s state law banning abortion, except for the life of the mother, has left some doctors weighing if a patient is close enough to death to treat.

Most other states allow doctors to perform abortions to save the health of a mother. But, if the Supreme Court rules in Idaho’s favor, it could invite other states to pass restrictions without that exemption.

In a statement released Monday, Jack Resneck, the former president of the American Medical Association, said Idaho’s law forces doctors to withhold proper treatment for patients.

The state’s “dangerous standard cannot be applied to the real-life situations faced in emergency departments every day,” Resneck said. “There is no bright line when each patient’s condition suddenly reaches “life-threatening,” and deteriorating patients don’t want their physicians delaying care.”

FILE - Anti-Abortion demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court during a rally, March 26, 2024, in Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether doctors can provide abortions to pregnant women with medical emergencies in states that enact abortion bans. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - Abortion-rights groups march outside the Supreme Court, March 26, 2024, in Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether doctors can provide abortions to pregnant women with medical emergencies in states that enact abortion bans. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)

File - The Supreme Court is seen on Friday, April 21, 2023, in Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether doctors can provide abortions to pregnant women with medical emergencies in states that enact abortion bans. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)