ENGINEERS FEAR BOEING 777 UNSAFE, MAGAZINE REPORTS.

Byline: Associated Press 

Top Federal Aviation Administration officials disregarded safety concerns from their own engineers in engine tests on the Boeing 777, Business Week reported Thursday.

Quoting mostly unidentified sources, the article said engineers fear that if one of the twin engines threw a fan blade in flight, the engine would become unbalanced and produce vibrations that could cause the plane to lose stability.

"It's an issue of safety," one unidentified FAA engine specialist was quoted as saying. "It could lead to catastrophe."

Thomas McSweeney, director of aircraft certification at the agency, denied that the FAA cut corners to help Boeing get the plane into service in time to meet deadlines with customers and thus avoid costly penalties.

"The airplane has met every regulation that it was required to meet," McSweeney said in the article.

Brian Ames, a Boeing Co. spokesman at the 777 factory in Everett, Wash., said the issue was adequately considered in testing.

"We specifically tested for the fan blade stability issue and ruled it out as a problem," Ames said.

Business Week reported that company officials refused to comment for the article, but Ames said the magazine rejected "an opportunity for background briefings" on the certification process.

"It's unfortunate that Business Week would publish an article with conclusions based on innuendo, hearsay and anonymous sources," he said. "Business Week only wanted answers to specific speculative questions without prior knowledge or background on the Boeing 777 project or the certification process."

Sandra Allen, assistant FAA administrator for public affairs in Washington, D.C., issued a statement that "the testing and analysis of the Boeing 777 was unprecedented in its scope and breadth."

The 777, the first plane designed entirely on a computer, was certified April 19 by the FAA and quickly achieved widespread popularity. The 777 is used on daily London-Washington, D.C., flights, and 15 of the planes were included in a $4 billion Malaysia Airlines order earlier this month.

Rather than the four engines typically used on long-haul aircraft, The 777 has two. They are the largest ever made for a commercial plane and thus have unusually heavy fan blades - 48 pounds in the largest configuration, more than triple the weight of the same component in 747 engines.

Fan blade breaks have been reported in 24 other jet airliners since 1990, none resulting in a crash, but the effect might be more serious in the 777, the article said.

Some believe the cockpit might shake so hard that pilots would be unable to read their instruments, the report said.