On Oct 21st 2015, a Royal Brunei Airlines Boeing 787-800, registration V8-DLB performing flight BI-684 from Manila (Philippines) to Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei) with 152 passengers, was climbing out of Manila when the crew stopped the climb at FL280 reported the left hand engine (Trent 1000) had failed and was shut down. The aircraft returned to Manila for a safe landing on runway 24 about 50 minutes after departure.
The flight was cancelled.
The airline confirmed the Dreamliner’s crew received abnormal indications for one engine prompting the captain to turn back to Manila for technical checks. A number of passengers have already been rerouted onto other flights, the remaining passengers were taken to hotels.
Philippines’ Civil Aviation Authority reported the crew informed air traffic control the left hand engine had failed and declared emergency.
On Oct 28th 2015 the airline reported that while preparing the change of the left hand engine a boroscopic inspection of both engines confirmed, that BOTH engines had sustained similiar damage.
The airline wrote: “Rolls Royce has conducted a detailed boroscope inspection of both engines as part of preparations to replace the affected engine, with a spare which has already been transported to MNL from BWN. However, in recent hours information has been conveyed to the airline by Rolls Royce that the second on wing engine on this aircraft has itself being the subject of similar damage. The boroscope inspection has now revealed evidence of damage to a number of blades on both engines, for reasons which are as yet unknown. At this point, there is no evidence that an external event such as a bird strike has caused this damage to both engines. Efforts to establish the cause of the damage by Rolls Royce are continuing, fully supported by the RB Engineering team.”
The airline continued that as result of this finding all Dreamliners in their fleet are to undergo boroscopic inspections now, too, causing “very severe” disruptions of flight schedule in the coming days.
Source: The Aviation Herald
