Holed Southwest Airlines flight makes emergency landing

[ianhind]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12945453

probably completely unrelated but immediately reminded me of an Aloha 737 many years ago

[FlyTexas]

Yep, this definitely got my attention at work yesterday. Am very glad that the passengers and crew are safe.

Brian

[Chris Trott]

Better story here -

http://flightaware.com/news/ap/NTSB-Fus ... lane/20992

This plane was one of 80 that hadn't yet had it's upper fuselage skins replaced, but had been inspected per the previous requirements from an earlier incident and nothing had been found, so it had been put in line to get the skin replaced. When about 1/3 of your fleet is 737-300's, it's kinda hard to take them all out of service for an extended period of time while you make the replacements, so you take what you hope to be a controlled risk by putting the "best" aircraft at the end. Sadly it looks like this one may have been missed or just not gotten in in time.

BTW, the Aloha incident should (theoretically) never happen again. After it occured, the design of the 737 and all future aircraft was changed with better "ripstopping" designed into it to keep cracks and tears from propogating to the point of compromising the entire structure as the Aloha aircraft's cracks did. It won't stop a large hole from happening, but it'll keep the top from completely separating, making for a much more manageable emergency instead of requiring a near miracle.

[airboatr]

Glad as well everyone was safe Brian

btw
I'd fly them in a new York second, but I've got no particular place to go.

Speaking of holed Aircraft , anyone catch the story about the airliner with the found bullet hole during preflight?
yikes.

The word I got was it might have come from a nearby police shooting range.
.......
That's actualy a range at which police use to practice shooting targets.
It's not like they use police for targets. (I just said that in case Christopher wanted to get technical with my terminology.)

[Chris Trott]

We found a bullet hole in the tail of one of our Convairs at Detroit Metro in 2004. It'd happened perviously in 2000 and 2002.

[Garry Russell]

According to the news this morning Southwest have had to gound over 80 aircraft for checks

[tonymadge]

I guess that their 737's are highly utilized and that means a lot of cabin pressurisation and de-pressurisation so fatigue sets in. I guess high utilisation of these by other carriers will be watching with interest and companies like Ryanair will be interested as to the result. They operate the later 800 but by now some of those must have very high cycles.

[cstorey]

other carriers will be watching with interest and companies like Ryanair will be interested as to the result

Surely there's nothing that gaffer tape won't fix???

[Garry Russell]

That was the issue with the Aloha

An awful lot of cycles on the frame

It's just as well they build failure protection into the fuse

[airboatr]

other carriers will be watching with interest and companies like Ryanair will be interested as to the result

Surely there's nothing that gaffer tape won't fix???

Or if it happens during flight they'll charge extra for the skylight view.