Hundreds of aircraft engines to receive emergency inspection following death of woman ‘sucked from the cabin’

Several airlines have been ordered to carry out the engine inspections following the tragic death.

As reported earlier this month, a woman died while travelling on a Boeing 737 when a engine fan blade broke loose and caused an explosion at 30,000 feet. Shrapnel from the engine smashed the window, which caused rapid decompression in the cabin, and 43-year-old mother-of-two Jennifer Riordan was partially sucked out of the cabin, before other passengers pulled her back on board. A Philadelphia medical examiner stated that Jennifer Riordan's cause of death was blunt trauma to her head, neck and torso. Following this, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the inspection of 681 Boeing 737 engines around the world over the next twenty days. The Boeing 737 aircraft that Jennifer Riordan was a passenger on had a fault in one of its CFM56-7B engines, and ultrasonic tests on fan blades that have performed 30,000 or more total accumulated flight cycles will be carried out. The FAA said: "Fan blade failure due to cracking could result in an engine in-flight shutdown, uncontained release of debris and possible airplane decompression."