Southwest Airlines announced early Saturday that it will keep 81 Boeing 737 aircraft out of its flying schedule for inspecting following Friday's depressurization event on a Phoenix-Sacramento flight, according to a statement released by the carrier.Metal fatigue in aircraft with high numbers of pressurization cycles is not unknown. There have been a number of previous examples of 737s with similar problems. Some years ago a large section of the roof came off of one in Hawaii.
Southwest Airlines officials announced Saturday morning that the carrier has teamed up with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine the cause of the hole that blew into the top of a Boeing 737 aircraft mid-flight Friday. Southwest will be working with Boeing over the next several days on an inspection regimen covered by a set of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airworthiness Directives. The inspection focus around checking for aircraft skin fatigue.
The 737 is the ideal plane for short haul travel, and therefore goes through a lot more cycles in a year than larger aircraft do. After hundreds or thousands of inflations and deflations something is bound to give.
Fortunately, there's a lot of redundant strength built into the 737 fuselage so even a sizable tear does not compromise the structural integrity of the aircraft. It makes for a pretty exciting flight, but the pilots did everything right yesterday and the plane landed without incident. That plane will fly again.
Posts
2 comments:
It may not be cheaper to inspect these planes while taking all of them out of service, but considering the cost of having another one open up in flight....it's what the wise turtle does.
Qantas airlines and Southwest airlines both have the safest track record in aviation history. Both companies have NEVER had a plane fall out of the sky. Most United airline planes are extremely old planes. One of the reasons why southwest can operate at a lower cost, is because they pay a fixed price for their fuel.
Post a Comment