This was forwarded to me by my cousin, Stan. I have no way of verifying whether it is true or just some trumped up story with some doctored photos. However, if there is any truth at all to this story, then I would want to caution Jane--who I understand may be going to China again this coming summer--to avoid flying on China Airlines.
Dave "Chinese Airlines...What A Story!" Chinese Airlines--You won't believe the following story and photos, but it actually happened. It appears the only reason we really need to worry about the Chinese is that there are just so damn many of them. You might want to think twice the next time you fly on a Chinese airline. A pilot for a Chinese carrier requested permission and landed at FRA (Frankfurt, Germany) for an unscheduled refueling stop. The reason soon became apparent to the ground crew: The Number 3 engine had been shutdown previously because of excessive vibration, and because it didn't look too good. The attached photos show the condition of the #3 engine when the airliner arrived in Frankfurt with a load of passengers. The engine had sometime previously encountered something hard, like rocks, and instead of changing the engine, China Airlines decided to immobilize the engine with lapbelts and send it off with three engines. Hey, super human pilots can do such things! However, if the pilots had refused they would have probably ended up in a salt mine somewhere. It had apparently been no problem for the tough guys back in China: as they took some sturdy straps and wrapped them around two of the fan blades and the stator blades behind, thus stopping any unwanted windmilling (engine spinning by itself due to airflow passing through the engine during flight) and associated uncomfortable vibration caused by the severely out-of-balance fan blades. Note that the straps are seat belts. How resourceful! After making the "repairs," off they were sent into the wild blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only three engines! Paris was their destination. With the increased fuel consumption, they ran a bit low on fuel, and just set it down a few hundred miles from their destination for a quick refill. That's when the problems started: The Germans, who are kind of picky about this stuff, inspected the malfunctioning engine and immediately grounded the aircraft. Besides the seatbelts, notice the appalling condition of the fan blades. The airline operator had to send a bundle of money to get the first engine replaced (it took about 10 days). The repair contractor decided to do some impromptu inspection work on the other engines, none of which looked all that great either. The result: a total of three engines were eventually changed on this aircraft before it was permitted to fly again.
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