Southwest’s Engine Type Considered Among Most Reliable Despite Recent Issues

The Southwest Airlines engine that failed Tuesday, leading to one passenger death — the first for a U.S. airline since 2009 and the first for Southwest since it began flying in 1971 — has long been considered among the most reliable, and until recently, had almost a perfect record, experts said. "This is the single most-used engine both now and ever," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consulting company. "It is the ultimate workhorse. It powers almost all flying Boeing 737s aside from a few antiques." Just about every person who has ever flown has likely been on a narrow-body aircraft fitted with a CFM56 engine. The engine, produced as part of a more than four-decade old joint venture between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines, a French company, had been the 737's exclusive engine for decades, and it's on about half of the world's flying Airbus A320s, Aboulafia said. CFM said this engine, called the CFM56-7B, has