* DC-10 Engines Really DID Suck

Back in the 1990's when I was flying around the world a lot - three weeks out of four, typically - bringing the Internet to Africa, Asia, Eastern Russia (Siberia) and other far-flung places, the Douglas DC-10 was the business traveller's least favorite ride, for a lot of reasons.  mostly, they were rattletraps with poor ventilation, and there was always a horrible vibration on takeoff due to what pilots told me was, "an 'acceptable' amount of unbalance in the engines."  This was further explained as something "caused by parts of the compressor fan blades breaking off over time, a known issue."

Today, this from the FAA, 15 years later:

Washington (CNN) -- The failure of General Electric engines on four jet aircraft overseas during the past two years has prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to issue an "urgent" recommendation to increase inspections of the engines on U.S. aircraft.

None of the incidents resulted in crashes, injuries or fatalities. But in all four cases, engine parts penetrated the engine housing.

Such "uncontained engine failures" are particularly dangerous because flying engine parts could puncture fuel or hydraulic lines, damage flight surfaces or even penetrate the fuselage and injure passengers.

At issue are General Electric CF6-45/50 series jet engines, older engines found on a small number of jets.
FAA officials said 373 of the engines are in service in the United States, on a fewer, but unknown, number of planes. The engines are used on some Airbus A300s, Boeing 747s, DC-10s, MD-10s and U.S. Air Force KC-10s.