B737-800
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Distraction; Situational Awareness; Time Pressure; Workload
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Smoke / Fire / Fumes / Odor
Flight Crew Rejected Takeoff; Flight Crew Returned To Gate; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft
During 'my leg' shortly after the start of takeoff roll; with no abnormal indications in the cockpit; we had a call from the Flight Attendants and they stated that passengers were saying there was a fire in the left engine with flames of about 10-12 feet long coming out of the back of the engine. Captain then immediately initiated a flawless abort at just under 80 knots. Not knowing at that point exactly what was going on yet; I again reviewed/scanned all the cockpit indications and saw nothing abnormal. I then notified tower that we were aborting and they instructed us to exit the runway to the right/northwest side away from the terminal. Since we had no indications of any fire Captain initially decided to not declare an emergency while we continued to assess the situation but we did ask for the Fire Department to respond. We also shut down the engine initially just as a precaution and also left the flaps down in case we did get indications of a fire and need to execute an emergency evacuation. We ran the Emergency Evacuation checklist initially as well. We also ran the Brake Cooling checklist too just to be sure. After the Fire Chief cleared us we were towed back to a gate. Afterward a mechanic showed us a picture from the back end of the engine showing oil puddling in the bottom of the engine cowl and some sort of 'O-ring' or something that he said had failed. Both engines had just been serviced with oil before our flight. What amazed me the most was the short time it took from the start of the takeoff roll to the time we were notified in the cockpit considering the Flight Attendants didn't see it themselves and were just relaying info from a group of passengers. It seemed to me to be a textbook case of teamwork or crew coordination and communication between the front end and the back end in a critical phase of the flight.
B737-800 First Officer reported rejecting the takeoff at about 80 knots after a Flight Attendant notified the crew about flames from an engine tailpipe detected by passengers. A failed oil seal was found.