United Airlines 777 jet loses engine cowling mid-flight over Pacific

HONOLULU. An engine cowling flew off of a Boeing 777 commercial passenger jet operated by United Airlines, flying from San Francisco, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii under flight number UA1175 this week. Initial reports indicated the aircraft engine was falling apart in mid-air over the Pacific Ocean.

The capable crew safely made an emergency landing in Honolulu. No one was injured although passengers were understandably shaken.

Twitter hashtag #UA1175 reveals a wealth of comments, images, and videos from UA1175 passengers, including entertaining observations by Erik Haddad (@erikhaddad), whose profile indicates he is a user experience engineer at Google, technical conference speaker, and frequent flyer. Haddad tweeted: “I don't see anything about this in the manual.”

Images: @erikhaddad

Matt Griffin (@MattGrffn), an aviation geek/writer and flight-simulator pilot, credits the flight crew, tweeting: “Looks like the flight crew used the asymmetrical thrust to assist the turn onto finals. An excellent piece of airmanship #ua1175.”

Arguably, the best photo comes from @b_rice_k on Instagram:

Maria Falaschi (@mfalaschi), a marketing consultant, tweeted that it was the scariest flight of her life.

Intelligent Aerospace, the global aerospace technology network, reports on the latest tools, technologies, and trends of vital importance to aerospace professionals throughout the industry and around the globe, including engineers, engineering managers, and other key decision-makers involved in the research & development, design, test, manufacture, maintenance, upgrade and retrofit, management, and acquisition of electronics hardware and software components, tools, and systems for commercial and military fixed-wing, rotor-wing, and unmanned aircraft, air traffic control, airport operations, satellites, and space.