Delta Air Lines Boeing 737-900ER Forced To Return To Sacramento After Suffering Engine Issues

A Delta Air LinesBoeing 737 flying out of Sacramento returned to the airport shortly after departure due to an issue with one of its two CFM56 engines. The aircraft landed safely on its departure runway, and no injuries were reported among the crew or passengers.

Engine issues

Delta Air Lines Flight DL-2229 flies nonstop from Sacramento International Airport (SMF) to Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP). However, yesterday’s flight was more eventful than the airline had planned.

The flight was operated using a Boeing 737-900ER, registration N818DA, equipped with two CFM International CFM56-7B26E. According to data from ch-aviation, the aircraft is 10.64 years old and was delivered to Delta on March 17th, 2014. The airline leases the aircraft, which is owned by Park Aerospace Holdings and managed by Avolon.

According to the Aviation Herald, the aircraft departed from SMF’s runway 35R and climbed through 18,400 ft. According to data from Flightradar24, the aircraft stopped climbing roughly 10 minutes after takeoff. This is possibly due to the crew noticing issues with the engine.

Shortly after, the aircraft began to turn around and head back towards SMF. It returned to the airport roughly 20 minutes later. In a statement, the FAA said:

“Delta Air Lines Flight 2229 returned safely to Sacramento International Airport in California around 7 a.m. local time on Thursday, October 24, after the crew reported an engine issue. The Boeing 737-900 was headed to Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport.”

It is unclear what caused the engine issue and its severity. However, it appears that the crew didn’t report an emergency but made a precautionary landing.

Simple Flying has contacted Delta Air Lines for a statement regarding the incident and the nature of the failure.

Aftermath

Passengers had to deplane from the aircraft and faced a delay while the airline looked for a replacement aircraft to complete the trip.

According to Flight Aware, the replacement aircraft departed at 13:43 PDT and landed at 19:07 CDT after a flight time of 3 hours and 24 minutes, which meant a delay of 7 hours and 27 minutes. It appears that N818DA is still grounded at SMF.

As of June 2024, the aircraft had accumulated 33,667 total flight hours and 12,893 flight cycles. ch-aviation estimates that the aircraft should currently be at roughly 34,500 flight hours.

CFM56 engines are some of the most reliable aircraft engines in use today. According to the manufacturer, they have a 99.96 dispatch reliability rate, translating to less than one in 2,500 flights.

It also has an in-flight shutdown (IFSD) rate of 0.003, which is one incident every 333,333 flight hours. It is unclear if the engine was shut down in flight on this occasion. Modern CFM56 engines are expected to have a shop visit where maintenance will occur around every 14,000 hours and 10,000 cycles.

However, failures do occur. But more often than not, they tend to be minor issues that don’t threaten the safety of the flight. Pilots are risk-averse and discontinue flights with engine issues, which could lead to bigger problems or a higher repair bill if the engine continues running.