♪ arthel: continuing coverage, breaking news out of colorado where police say debris from a boeing 777 has landed in people's front yards. let's go to a police press conference right now. >> the video that we've seen out on social media and what people have been telling us is it was a rather large passenger plane. >> [inaudible] covering such a large area, how long does an investigation like this take, and what kind of impact is it going to have on the people who live around here? >> yeah. so i can't say specifically how long the investigation will take. the ntsb will tell you, but the amount of crime scene tape in the area we're trying to secure right now is very i

unprecedented for us. we're trying to insure we have as much of the debris as enclose add possible, so we have -- as possible, so we have officers across, as you can see we have crime tape everywhere. to this is a pretty extensive project, and we'll stay here to help the, this tsb as long as possible, but i definitely think it's going to be the quite a while. >> forgive me if you've already covered this -- >> it's okay. >> -- damage to homes specifically with debris coming down, something like that. >> i have heard reports that there were some homes that were damaged. the extent of that damage, i have not been able to narrow down at this point. so there are reports of that. it looks like some of the biggest pieces came down near 13th and elmwood. >> such a spread-out scene and -- [inaudible] is it a miracle that nobody was injured thus far? >> yeah, i'm honestly shocked

looking at this debris field, this is a popular spot, we have the dog park, there's playgrounds, this park on a day liked today, we could have hundreds of people here. and the fact that we are still not getting reports of any injuries is absolutely shocking at this point. i'm -- it's amazing. >> are you running into problems with people trying to touch the debris. >>? >> yeah, we have seen people touching and picking up the debris on social media, a lot of curiosity, that's understandable. this was a big deal, but we're just asking people, please, leave it in place. let us know, 303-438-6400, let our dispatchers know, and we will make sure. we did actually also send out a code red alert in broomfield to about 1400 residents around this vicinity just letting them know once again, please, don't touch the debris. you know, we want to keep it intact for the ntsb. >> on a personal level, you

know, when you first started hearing reports that either a plane had crashed or something was falling from the sky, what was going through your -- [inaudible] >> yeah. actually, i'm a broomfield resident, i live in broomfield, and i was actually out running errands. a family member called me first and said they heard the explosion, and within seconds my work phone started ringing. by the time i looked at social media and saw the photos, my heart dropped when i saw some of the sizes of pieces, i thought, oh, my goodness, we're going to have injuries and much more extensive damage and, thankfully, at this point in time we have not heard of any injuries or any at all. >> [inaudible] a lot worse? >> yeah. yeah, exactly. it could have been. we could have had people here at toking park with their -- here

at the dog park with their did playing soccer, there are times when we have hundreds of thousands of kids on this turf field because we have soccer going. with covid and winter time, we don't have a lot of the athletic fields open. but during a summer day you'd see thousands of kids out on these turf fields. >> i can't remember, what happens now? ntsb, fbi -- [inaudible] >> yeah. so we'll secure the area, take initial witness statements from people that have debris in their yard, and then we will eventually turn the investigation over to ntsb. they'll determine what happened. really we're just going to assist them from this point on. any information that our dispatchers gather, we'll make sure we provide that to them and then, of course, work in conjunction with them to help them with whatever we can. >> are you guys the only municipality that's having a response like this?

>> yeah, you know what, i don't know any other municipalities. i can say i've been in contact with other public information officers from other departments in the area, and i have not heard that they experienced any debris. as far as i know, broomfield was the only area that was impacted. okay? anything else, guys? all right. if you guys don't think you'll need anything, any more sound from me, then i'll probably head out in a little bit. but just page us if you guys need anything else. >> thank you so much, appreciate it. >> you're welcome. arthel: that was rachel welte, public information officer. before i continue with this, i want to let you know that we just have received a statement from united airlines that says, quote: flight 328 from denver to honolulu experienced an engine failure shortly after departure, returned safely to denver and was met by emergency crews as a precautions. there are no reported injuries

onboard, and we will share more information as it becomes available. but also letting us know that the engine affected is the number two engine. there were 231 passengers and 2 crew members onboard that boeing 777. and getting back to that police conference, we just heard ms. welte noting this was a very widespread debris field, and they're trying to collect as much debris as possible there. the broomfield, colorado, police department. of course, ntsb is on the ground as well, and they want the try to keep it intact. they said that it will be quite a while, by the way, to fully investigate this, and there has been some reports of some houses being damaged, but they're still waiting to suss that out. and the one really major point that stuck out to me was that this area here, normally if this were not covid in the middle of this pandemic, this area would

have been loaded with people. there's a dog park there, and normally she says on saturday you've got hundreds of people there if not thousands, and they have soccer games held there as well. so everyone is very, very grateful that this was not -- it could have been really bad. and, by the way, if you are in the colorado area there, you are asked to call 303-438-6400 with any information you might have, and they're asking, please, please, please -- again, if you're in the area or near the area -- don't go there, do not touch the debris. that's what they're asking. and what i want to do bring in another guest right now on the phone. i'm going to be joined by rob marks. rob a commercial pilot and the publisher of jet wine.com. thank you for joining us. i wanted to know what types of planes do you fly? >> well, i haven't flown the 777, but i fly traditionally

business jets. but we face some of the same issues that the commercial crews do. and, of course, one thing i want to mention is that everybody's talking about how lucky we are we were here, and certainly were that all these people were not in the park, we can't forget the fact that onboard that airplane you had two pilots -- of course, you did also have other crew members because there were a bunch of flight attendants in the back most likely trying to keep people calm who happened to look out the window and see that engine explode. and it's not, it's not a small issue. but, of course, they managed to wrestle that airplane back down to the ground in one piece. and while an engine failure is something we train for all the time, a catastrophic engine failure in which the airplane, which the engine, i should say,

comes unglued is not normal. the engines are designed to fail but to fail intact. so all we do know right now is the what, which is that this airplane engine exploded, but we don't know anything about the why. arthel: and you don't know how either. >> no, no, that's true. and we'll find that out from the why. trucked be a lot of -- there could be a lot of speculation, but the main thing is they got that airplane with 230 plus people onboard back down on the ground in one piece or, if they hadn't, we wouldn't be talking about how lucky we were about the park. that would have seemed very small. but this was a, you know, well-trained crew, and they did exactly what they were supposed to do. arthel: indeed. and you make a really good point, and i think that too often we forget exactly what the duties are of flight attendants and flight crews. it's not really the serve us, it's to keep us safe in flight and particularly in cases of any sort of landings or crash

landings, i should say. i want to talk more about that, the personal aspect. because you, i know you mainly fly, pardon me, business planes. of course, you probably have been in a simulator for a boeing 777. and i just want to talk about the mindset. i know you're trained for it, but sort of if you could somehow share with us what happens, youu know, your adrenaline has to be sky high, yet at the same time you have to be extremely calm. >> well, that's very true because if you don't remain calm, i mean, it all goes, you know, put crazy. but, of course, we also know that when an emergency happens in the simulator, we know in the back of our minds, okay, nobody's going to get hurt even if we mess it up. we just start the simulator over again, and we replay the problem until we, you know, handle it better. but in real life when it happens, you're not thinking

about it. you're just thinking about that airplane climbing out to the west and headed for honolulu, it's heavy, it's got a lot of fuel onboard, it's nearly full of people, and then this just happens at the snap of a finger, and there are those two or three seconds where everybody goes, holy -- you know, what the sam hill is that. and then you start seeing warnings on the panel, you know, red lights lighting up, oral warnings, and then you go back into your training mode, and, you know, okay, let's work the problem. what do we know. we're still flying, we're starting to slow down, it's pulling to the right because in this case the right engine was what failed. straighten the airplane out and let's, you know, level the airplane, run the checklist which is something we always have because they don't, you know, they don't want to trust our memories to everything in an

emergency like this. how do we deal with this problem and how do we get this airplane aimed back at the airport. luckily today we had really, really good weather, but denver's also known to be down to the ground in snow. that would have made this issue more complicated. not impossible, but more complicated because we wouldn't have known what the braking conditions might have been like on the runway. so they -- everybody seemed to have some luck going for them today. arthel: have you ever, mr. mark, been in a close call yourself? >> no. luckily, you know, i think if you talk to most pilots that are flying big jets, most of us have never experienced anything like this. thank goodness. the way that they design these engines and these aircraft, i mean, they're designed to fly thousands and thousands of hours

or cycles, too, which is the takeoff and landing, without a problem. and they do it. because we don't ever hear about this kind of a situation very often. and, but again, for those people that have experienced it, you know, long after it's over and you're back on the ground you go, well, yeah, this was interesting or it was exciting. but trust me, in that first 30 or 60 seconds it gets pretty -- the adrenaline is flowing. arthel: mr. rob mark, if you could stand by for me, right now i need to take a break, so if you would stand by and everyone else stick around. we're going to take a break, back in a moment.

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eric: we're covering united airlines flight 328 with 231 people onboard. it took off from denver international airport, it lost the number two engine. that's the one on the right. thankfully, the boeing 777 then returned to the airport in a flight that lasted about 40 minutes for it to make that turn. metal rained down on the town of broomfield, colorado, just 32 miles west of denver international airport. this airplane that lost that

engine coulding was the fifth boeing 777 that was built by the company. it dates back to 1995. the plane was bound for honolulu from denver. joining us on the phone is alan diehl, former faa and ntsb investor who knows about this. mr. diehl, one of the videos from a passenger shows the engine is intact. apparently, the engine itself did the not explode, that it's intact on the engine piling but just that the cowelling that surrounds the engine, the front of it has been sheered off -- sheared off, and there's some flames coming out of the engine. what do you make of that, in fact, that the engine is intact, but it lost its cowelling? what could cause this? >> i guess theoretically it could have been a bird strike. the pictures on the ground don't show impact damage, but that's a possibility, and it's happened before.

last year, i think it was december can, had a similar, jal 777-200. so it does happen. any kind of engine failure on these modern jets is extremely rare, and i think this is going to be called an uncontained engine failure even though it doesn't look like the pressure blades separated just from the few pictures i've seen. and i haven't seen the video you've described, erin. eric: yeah. when you say ununcontained, what does that mean? >> basically, it means parts fly off the engine. these engines turn at tens of thousands of rpm, and when they explore, they can send debris into the wings, flaps, fuselage. a couple years ago there was an uncontained engine failure, and a lady from albuquerque was literally sucked out through a broken window. but that's very -- that's extremely rare. in this case apparently there

was no fuselage damage, and i'm guessing they flew around for a while probably to burn down fuel to get to a weight where they could safely land. they can take off heavier than they can land. and, of course, they wanted crash carts standing by and all the precautions taken, preparation taken for that landing, eric. eric: yeah. one of the attentions tweeted out that he was on -- passengers tweeted saying, quote: the pilots did an amazing job because it was loud, shaking and scary as hell back here. fire crews on the tarmac. walk us through -- the pilots are trained for this. you've got to go through your checks and be qualified and certified at least once a year, and you do this in this simulator quite often, a contained or uncontained engine failure on takeoff. >> absolutely. it's standard -- you're right. virtually every six months training sessions for captains,

typically every year for first officers. they're going to get a similar type of failure. maybe not an uncontained engine failure which, of course, is always the bigger concern because it can damage the flaps. the leading edge of the wing could be damaged or, for that matter, even the trailing edge, the flaps on the back of the wing. so it's, you know, they give you multiple emergencies during these simulator or sessions so there are no surprises and, of course, all these guys and gals are very well trained to handle this kind of emergency. the ones that they haven't programmed that can cause the most problems. but these are standard procedures that go back to the old days where engines did fail on a regular basis. is these guys, guys and gals, i don't know what the genders were, but they did a good job, clearly, and it looks like there was no panic and everything was handled. it's interesting that the passenger talked about

vibration. that suggests that there may have been -- and i'm speculating now, may have been some loss of turbine blades, and those are always a concern. the one thing, eric, i would mention to anybody living in that area, if you see something that you think might be a part of this engine, please don't pick it up and keep it for a souvenir. it may be vital to the ntsb's investigation. a classic example in sioux city where a turbine blade was missing, and it took several months to find it and solve the problem. it was a manufacturing problem. it was a different type of aircraft, but the point is please don't pick up -- yeah. eric: yeah. don't pick anything up. that was the dc-10, the united flight with captain al haines, such a hero in that crew, bringing -- a turbine flew off the middle engine on the tail, cut the hydraulic line, so they had to fly physically

themselves. sadly, 232 people killed but others did survive, and it wasn't until a few months later a woman miles and miles and miles away found this blade sitting in her cornfield. so they were able -- >> that's right. eric: let me walk you through the video i'm looking at. bear with me while i describe this to our viewers. it's video taken by a passenger of the engine. it shows no leading edge damage. you've got the front slats, apparently, are down, they are deployed, which is what you do when you're going slower. the engine blades are turning but not -- i guess they're windmilling, not going at full speed. you do have some flames in the rear of the engine. not coming out the back of the engine, and it just appears that it's the cowelling at the covering, the metal covering of the engine, that just disintegrated and ripped off. alan, the whole -- the engine is intact and on the engine -- what

do you make of that? if you look at the fans, they all look like they're inside the engine mount, yet the whole thing clearly has been ripped out. >> well, oddly enough, the cowelling itself can be dangerous when it separates. that's what happened with that southwest 737 when the lady was sucked through the window. but clearly, this sounds like a more benign type of failure that occurred, i guess that was back two or three years ago now. but, yeah, it's -- the engines are designed, of course, they do have structure in there to try to contain these kind of failures, and apparently it did work. it appears that it's truly a cowelling from what you're saying, eric. again, al diehl speculating here. [laughter] but it appears that the engine didn't disintegrate or have an uncontained failure.

sounds like the damage may have been limited literally to the cowelling. now, if there was -- eric: yeah, the engine, the engine is intact. and we're going to get that video first as soon as we get permission and are able to show it. united airlines flight 328 bound from denver to hon hulu. boeing 777 -- honolulu. that engine probably certainly not one of the original engines as these go through maintenance all the time, and we are thankful for our flight crews, the pilots, the co-pilots, the flight attendants who keep us safe in the sky. and for this crew, i hope united airlines shows them. live coverage of the cowelling that came off of the boeing 777 this quiet saturday afternoon. we'll continue here on the fox news channel in just a bit as we get some more information from the authorities. stay with us as we continue.

arthel: and we are continuing our breaking news coverage here of united airlines flight 328, pardon me, it was leaving denver heading to honolulu, taking off around 1 p.m. mountain time which is 3 p.m. eastern timement timement -- time. 231 people onboard, 10 crew members. and on takeoff the plane experienced engine failure. in fact, it lost the engine cowling which is the cover, that big ring, that circular piece that you see on the right side of your screen. pardon me. that fell very close to a house there on the ground. fortunately, there are no injuries reported. pardon me. but the metal did rain down on broomfield, colorado, which is 32 miles west of denver or international airport. and joining me on the phone right now is someone who knows about boeing planes, kathleen banks, a former pilot. and, kathleen, i'm not sure, ms. banks, if you have flown a boeing 777, but you have flown

boeing planes before. given what we have reported, what you know maybe through colleagues and some inside circles and information lines, what do you think happened here? >> thank you for having me. what i think happened is we have a united airlines 777, one of the older models. this plane if looks to be about 25 years old, but certainly the engine's a lot newer than that. they took off from runway 27 heading west from the denver airport on their way for a long haul flight to hawaii. it looks like they got to about 13,000 feet which since denver is a mile high, they climb roughly 8,000 feet, they had what we would call an uncontained engine failure. they apparently reported a fire back to air traffic control, and then they started the process of running through the engine shutdown checklist and securing the engine, notifying the rest of the crew in the back that they were going to return to the

airport. i'm sure that they coordinated with air traffic control to have fire trucks as a precautions and also probably to deplane the passengers as soon as safely after touchdown. so there's a whole procedure that you go through. and i just want to say that this is the thing that pilots train for. if it's anything that they train for in their annual or semiannual visits to the simulator training facility, it's going through these engine fire and engine failure procedures. really at no time were the passengers in any danger. you certainly have good weather and a well-trained crew that is probably rehearsed this hundreds of times in their career. arthel: yeah. and the flight attendants, they are crucial at this time as well. considering this happened shortly after departure, everyone was still strapped in their seats with seat belts on, in times like this, as you said, your training kicks in automatically as well as the training of the flight attendants. in a situation like this, i'm

just coming now from the perspective of a passenger, at this time i want to hear from the pilot, from the captain telling me what's happening. is that something that you do, or is it the flight attendants -- [laughter] i want to hear from you. >> it's funny you say this. i've actually experienced this, we had it literally when we just put the wheels up, the worst possible time you could have it because you're just trying to accelerate from the ground. we a had an uncontained engine failure, and we didn't need our dials, our lights, our indicators to tell us, we heard that engine let loose. so we know the passengers want to hear from the pilot. they want that comforting sound, folks, everything's going to be okay. oftentimes you don't have the time to do that because what you really want to focus on is the checklist that you want to run through and maintain, you know, positive control of the airplane at all times and then coordinating with air traffic control and sometimes with the

company, if necessary. so probably, you know, the pilot, if anything, they might have come on and made an announcement. i'm thinking if they had, we probably would have seen that reported on twitter -- [laughter] by now. i don't think we've seen that yet. but they probably coordinated with the flight attendants just to let them know that, obviously, they too could see what was happening out the window, but to let them know that they had everything under control. gnaw's only if you have time. and this only happened at 13,000 feet, so things were pretty rushed. they probably dumped fuel, judging from the fact that there's reports they were airborne for about 40 minutes. this plane was fairly loaded up with gas because we know their destination was honolulu. so one of the blessings is that this happened so close to the denver airport where they could just make a really uneventful landing instead of halfway to hon buy lulu when i'm -- honolulu when i'm sure it would have been a much more white

knuckle flight for the passengers. arthel: absolutely because -- well, two things come to mind. first of all, i want to stay there in the white knuckle experience. i'm glad that didn't happen, but if that were, hypothetically speaking, if you were over water and one of, your second engine is failing, can you fly the plane with one engine safely? >> yes. in fact, you know, you might recall airplanes used to have three engines, and then in the case of the 747, four engines. really decades ago with the popular are models things really changed around them with engine reliability, engine power, fuel burn, that sort of thing. so, yes, you could certainly make it to what we call the point of no return, that's if something happens rather than turn around to go back to denver, you would press on to honolulu and, yes, those planes can certainly make the trip. obviously, a bad experience for

the passengers. even with those pieces, you see that huge silver ring in those people's front yards, that's -- arthel: cowling. >> the fact that it went into empty parks and boulevards, you know, very, very fortunate outcome for everybody. but, again, this is the one thing pilots train for. every time you go back to simulator training, you will do engine failures on takeoff, and this is something they really can do by memory. they will bring out the checklist to make sure everything is covered, but this is something that pilots really train for, and so at no time really were the passengers in any danger. what we know so far, it sounds like none of the shrapnel from the engine penetrated the fuselage or the body of the 777. so that's also good news. arkansas yeah. very good news. you know, you were talking about the fact this this was a flight going to honolulu given that you

had, again, 231 passengers, 10 crew members onboard, luggage, lots of fuel, considering the weight of the plane at that time ask you said that the engine failure started at about 13,000 miles high, how long does it take to go from, you know, the ground to 13,000 miles? >> 13,000 feet. arthel: oh, excuse me. thank you. [laughter] >> yeah. the airport is approximately a mile high, so between 5-6,000 feet. so you're only climbing 7, 8,000 feet here at the most. so they're at that altitude in just a few minutes. so what took them so long to land after, again, they may have been dumping fuel trying to lighten, go through the checklist, coordinate which runway are we going to run on because denver has a huge option of runways, where would air traffic control like them to land, can they get the fire trucks there, you know, just in case. you know, every precautions is

taken. it's really a very orderly, a very orderly vent, and it sounds like these crew members did a commendable job. they did what they've trained for and, hopefully, those passengers will be on another united flight shortly bound for honolulu. arthel: yeah, indeed. the crew members, the pilots did do a commendable job. kathleen banks, you are a former pilot yourself. if you could stick around, i need to take a quick break, but i do have a couple more questions for you. do you mind? >> sure. arthel: okay, thank you. ful we'll be right back after a quick break.

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>> i heard that something definitely happened to his engine. look at that piece falling town there, look -- >> whoa. >> want to go see what that debris' about. did you see that? look, you can see the smoke way up high. >> whoa. arthel: eyewitness account there of united flight 328 taking off from denver heading to honolulu, experiencing engine failure shortly after departure. by the way, it did return to denver safely. crews, emergency crews met the

plane on the ground there, denver international. i am still on the line now with kathleen banks, she is a former pilot. kathleen, you flew for 20 years and here we are today discussing this as the second engine, engine number two on this boeing 777, failure. it fell off and you see the cover there, the cowling, just, you know, feet away from it looks like from my perspective from this home there on the ground. you know, i want you -- before we let you go here, describe for us the fraternity and the camaraderie among pilots who we as passengers trust so much. >> well, it's really been poignant, you know, the past few years because we had the debacle with the boeing 777 which really rocked the industry globally, and then compounded by the pandemic which so many people, you know, in the industry furloughed or having to take huge pay cuts or laid off and so

many aspiring pilots having to put their dreams on the back burner. so, yes, there's few industries that have been hit as hard as the airlines. and there's a great camaraderie, it's wonderful when you fly what we call a jump seat, that's when you get the privileges to ride around or when you get on a pass and you get to travel on other carriers. you're very relaxed because you know they went through the same training that you go through, and it's -- you can, it's fun sometimes to fly next to a nervous passenger because you can answer their questions, and you can, you know, kind of calm them down because you know just how good the training is with the simulators that we have today. they're just remarkable. and when you are in one doing an emergency procedure, if you're doing it right, there will be moments you forget you're in that simulator, and you truly believe you're in the air. it mimics that psalm stress and that same level of tension, which is wonderful. so they're fantastic training tools, and that's really why especially american air carriers

are the safest form of transportation on the planet. and you don't want to forget that just because we see one uncontained engine failure with these wonderfully dramatic pictures that we have. at no time really where the passengers' fates in any doubt with the kind of crew training to train for these unpredictable events. arthel: kathleen bangs, we thank you for joining us. i'm sorry that it's for this situation that couldt h could hn worse though, so we are all very grateful for your fellow pilot and the crew members as well, the flight attendants who took good care of everyone on thi plane. so thank you very much for joining us, kathleen bangs. all right, thank you, ms. bangs. eric? erik e eric yeah, arthel. it's always nice to, when you step onboard the plane to thank the pilots and thank the flight attendants for what they do. and remember the wonderful training that american aviation industry provides for the pilots. to recap, this was united

airlines flight 328, boeing 777, boeing heavy onboard 321 passengers, 10 crew members just out of denver international airport about maybe 1500 feet or 2,000 feet a cowling ripped off the right engine. there's a video that shows a flash and then black smoke. the engine did not education load. the engine is intact -- explode. it is the cowling, the protective covering around the engine that sheared off as you can see, came floating down on the homes in broomfield, colorado, 33 miles west of denver international airport. some of those heavy metal pieces hovering down slowly according to the videos that we've seen. this plane was the fifth 777 that was produced in 1995. no reports of any injuries. the passengers deplaned once the aircraft land landed 40 minutes later back at denver

international airport. ken christianson is with us, investigator and expert. so, ken, judging by -- i'm asking you to speculate. when a cowling comes off, some mechanical weakness, but the fact that the engine is on, it appears the fan blades are all intact. engines redesigned, are they not, to potentially do this if there's some type of failure, for the cowling to separate from the engine and the engine, thankfully, still stays on and they just try to shut it down? >> hi, eric. yeah, the cowling sort of encompasses the engine and provides streamlining, if you will, to the engine. that's -- and then that ring that fell down to the ground, that's the deicing or -- [inaudible] to keep the ice from going into the engine. so that's made to stay on the airplane, but it looked like the

whole engine cowling actually left the part of the aircraft. but you can see in the video that was provided that the front of the engine, the fan blades was actually rotating, and it looked like it was in the midst of being shut down. we can see the engine shaking on the pylon, and there was some severe vibration. and you would imagine that would happen when the cowling that provides the streamline in the part of the aircraft. so that would be all, you would expect that. but the crew seemed to handle it really well. eric: this is what they're trained for. one passenger tweeted out saying, quote: pilots did an amazing job because it was loud, shaking and scary as hell back here. fire crews have us out on the tarmac and, thankfully, no injuries among the passengers, says united, no injuries

reported by police on the ground. i mean, this has happened before. one viewer pointed out that a honolulu-bound united dreamliner, 2018, had an engine surge and a compressor stall caused a cowling to come off. we've had the more serious ones, we pointed out the dc-10 united flight in sioux city in which a fan blade sheared through the hydraulic system of the dc-10, and, of course, a woman was killed a couple of years ago on a southwest 737. is there a prime reason for this to happen, and the fact that there appears to be a flash and then black smoke, does that tell you anything about the cause? whether it's a fan blade involved or whether it's just a structural failure on the outside metal of the cowling? >> that's a good point. i mean, eric, it could be any -- none of the above or all of the above. so you want to look for a fan blade in the cold section, the

front of the engine, come pressing the air, and then that goes into the hot section where you inject fuel, and that's the turbine section which is providing the thrust for the engine. so you can have a catastrophic fan failure or a catastrophic turbine failure so any of that could to that. build up pressure within the cowling or the cowling could have a opinioner that failed or a opinioner that wasn't latched. i think these videos that are provided from the inflight will help the ntsb investigators and united get to the bottom of what the cause was. when you talk about speculating, that's like -- you could have metallurgy issues. you could have a fatigued blade which could have been not caught in manufacturing, overlooked or it could have simply been a

recent -- [inaudible] on today's flight that we're not aware of yet. it could have picked up metallic dee brie while it was taxiing or takeoff, something was blown across the tarmac and got into the engine that wasn't detexted. so this is a lot of -- detected. so there's a lot of potential reasons that this could have happened today. eric: and thankfully, of course, one final point. we remember back to sully sullenberger and the u.s. air flight which ingested those geese causing total engine failure. an engine stayed on until one was sheared off when they ditched in the hudson. >> right. eric: this really speaks to the professionalism of our aviation industry, doesn't it, ken? >> absolutely. and i agree with your previous caller, kathleen. the training is as good as it can be today. and if you look at the number of flights that happen every day,

southwest has 2500 flights per day, united probably at 3500, maybe 4000 flights a day. this happens day in and day out. even with the pandemic, there's some reduced flying, but when you look at the number worldwide and you just listed them earlier, the last time we had an issue was southwest when a fan blade actually came into the cabin. that was a worst case scenario. the crew was, again, just like kathleen said, the crew's trained for the emergency, flight simulator emergency procedures all the time, and the training of the u.s.-based airlines is second to up in in the world. second to none in the world. and this is a testament, just

what happened today. eric: that it is. and we thank this crew and the flight attendants and the united airlines for their professionalism. the worst thing, hopefully, that would have happened is the hole in the roof. those folks right now, they've got a hole in the roof, in the attic. got to patch that up. no injuries reported, thankfully, and certainly investigators will get to the bottom of this. ken christianson, aviation consultant, thank you for your insight and thank you for the reminder of just how safe flying really is. thank you. arthel? arthel: yeah, eric. we want to bring our own resident pilot in with us again, jon scott, who is also a phenomenal journalist and anchor of "fox news report" just wrapping up with us, you were on with us earlier, and just now that we've heard not only your account of what could have happened and the accounts of kathleen bangs and mr. christensen who eric was

just speaking to, i mean, just everyone is marveling at the training that american pilots go through. how they are prepared, and kathleen bangs estimates that this engine started failing around 13,000 feet above the ground. so wrapping up for us, what's your summation of what you've seen and heard here today? jon: well, you know, it could have been a bird ingestion, a bird strike just like afflicted sully sullenberger on that u.s. air flight some years ago in the miracle on the hudson. you know, canada geese are migrating this time of year, and a lot of them are in denver. that's the town where i was born, and they might have sucked in a couple birds which could have destroyed this engine from the inside out. i've seen pictures of the engine as it looked from the inside of the plane, and there's very little of the outer wrapping of the engine left. you see that ring there lying in somebody's front yard, and just the amazing thing that it fell where it did and not on top of that house where it could have

caused real structural damage and perhaps injuries if there were people inside. but, yeah, the crews are incredibly well trained. they did an incredibly good job. you know, a plane like that, below 10,000 feet you're doing somewhere around 290 miles an hour in a jetliner like that. and of to have the right engin sort of lose its -- engine sort of lose its entire outer skin the way it did provides tremendous vibration and everything else. so i'm sure it was very frightening for the passengers. the crew did a great job of handling this and returning back to the denver airport. they had, i'm sure, a significant the load of fuel onboard to get all the way to honolulu. whether they dumped fuel or not before landing, i'm not sure, but, you know, just that they were able to get it on the ground and there was no, you know, no fire, no explosion, anything like that, it's really a testament to the training these crew members undergo, arthel. arthel: absolutely. and kathleen bangs believes, the

shes that they may have begun to begin dumping fuel when the engine started to fail, but i'm sure you'll get more details on that in your show. the other thing i want to point out, not only are we really marveling at the training and the fantastic work of the crew, the pilots and the flight attendants and particularly the pilots, but want to also again just point out that there's a lot of luck on everybody's side today. the public information officer for the broomfield police department was just saying how widespread the debris field is but also noting these pictures that we were showing earlier where a lot of the bug chunks of debris -- big chunks of debris fell on a big park. that's a dog park, and were it not for the pandemic, she pointed out how hundreds of people could have been there on a saturday, you know, including thousands of children playing soccer. so we are grateful that this united flight here did not cause even more or any damage or human

toll, if you will. jon: something of a miracle. the way they build aircraft and engines and good luck on the ground as you say arthel. arthel: jon, eric and i are going to toss it over to you because it's time for "the fox report" with jon scott. eric, right? >> eric: you got it. thankfully. and, again, another testament to the safety of our aviation industry united flight 328 no injuries at all reported. everyone is safe and sound. jon? >> jon: arthel and eric, thank you. a scare in the air and on the ground as debris from a united airlines jet falls on to denver area neighborhoods. good evening. i'm jon scott and this is the fox report. ♪ ♪ take a live look at some of what fell out of the sky. it's on the ground now in broomfield, colorado, about 30 miles west of the denver