US safety regulators have called on Boeing to redesign the protective covering of engines on its older 737 aircraft to prevent a repeat of the fatal accident last year in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was pulled through a window damaged by shattered cowling.
The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that the US Federal Aviation Administration require Boeing to replace the fan cowling on all existing and future 737 Next Generation aircraft. Presently there are more than 7,000 737NGs flying.
The passenger was killed in April last year when Southwest flight 1380 suffered an engine failure roughly 30 minutes after take-off from La Guardia airport in New York. A defective fan blade broke off and shattered the protective covering of its CFM56-7B engine.