Having spent 35 years as a flight engineer, the grounding of the jets (however new) is just an exercise in prudence.

Nothing more than responsibility and ensuring passenger (and reputation) safety should be inferred at this stage.

If they blithely went on their way ignoring this catastrophic engine failure (meaning some of the bits on the inside, made it to the outside) then they'd be (rightly) accused of being too cavalier.

It is just possible the engine had sustained damage from something like a bird-strike or FOD (foreign object debris/damage), and it got worse - the engines obviously work hardest on take off and climb - the aircraft is at its heaviest at that point.

An aircraft like this has multiple redundancy in its systems - meaning it can sustain quite a few failures before it could be construed as 'life threatening'.

However, that said, they are really ugly and look like they've been designed by a Russian Aviation Bureau rather than Airbus. The 747 looks much nicer although I did most of my flying on Hercules, Tristars and DC10.

Whilst understandably shaken, passengers who 'defied death' in this incident are really just being a bit 'drama-queen' ish. They were not in much danger. Moreover it's the poor sods on the ground who were at most risk when several square feet of metal arrived from the sky.

Let's watch with interest.