Fresh Air @ Southwest

[WhisperJet]

Fresh Air through a football-sized hole... :doho:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/13/us ... topstories

Cheers,

Nick

[Garry Russell]

Are 737s not fitted with sunroofs??? :roll:

Sounds dicey but doesn't seem to have been too serious but it'll make them think

Would be nice when reporting such things if they would back it up with phot evidence.

Gary

[WhisperJet]

Are 737s not fitted with sunroofs??? :roll:
Sounds dicey but doesn't seem to have been too serious but it'll make them think

It's a neat reminder...



Cheers,

Nick

[Chris Trott]

Southwest does a nightly check (internal and external) for skin cracks from fatigue on all of their aircraft, even their newest. However, the top isn't easy to access on a nightly basis, so those cracks are obviously not always caught. However, there are "rip stop" strips all through the roofs on the aircraft, and the effect of them are seen in the few pictures of the hole (it rips through the area between frames and then stops). The aircraft in question is a high time 737-300 and is indicative of some of the problems operators face with old airplanes. You do the best you can, but sometimes weird stuff happens like this. I don't have any pictures handy, but if you look at the older Southwest aircraft, you'll see patches on many of them from the years of wear-and-tear where cracks have been patched as the aircraft age. Most are small, but a couple have larger patches from larger damage incurred. These patches are usually removed and new skin applied to the aircraft during heavy checks, however those only come once every 5 to 10 years, so obviously, the patches can be on a while.

Thankfully, the safety measures in place to ensure such events aren't catastrophic worked as advertised in this case, and the plane will be repaired and returned to service.

[Garry Russell]

Hi Chris

I've heard before about these special strips and they seem to work well.

As you say you do what you can and learn and pick up on any problems.

As with any well used machine, there will be problems that are often one off and not much can be done about that except bulid in safety...soemthing all manufacturers do

Garry

[petermcleland]

Would be nice when reporting such things if they would back it up with phot evidence

Here is a small one Gary:-

[Garry Russell]

Pic on the BBC shows the hole.

Investigators are looking into it

Seems like evryone was sensible about the incident

Garry

***EDIT**

Peter beat me ..the BBC pics not so clear either

Garry

[airboatr]

Pic on the BBC shows the hole.
Investigators are looking into it
Garry

have you no shame :brick:



so theres a hole in the roof........
it not like the pilot was flying the plane in such a manner he could see back of the aircraft through the
open cockpit door . and then he could't ... and then he could ...... and then he couldn't.....

[nigelb]

From The Washington Post:

"FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said an initial review indicated that inspection orders for the Boeing 737-300 didn't include inspecting the area of the body where the tear appeared on Monday's flight."

If memory serves, I think Southwest is also in hot water with the FAA for not performing rountine inspections. Shame because they are ranked by passengers as one of the best in the US.

Nigel²

[Chris Trott]

The whole inspection thing is an FAA BS move. They were doing the inspections, but someone within the FAA approved them to keep flying the planes while the inspections were being done and another felt they shouldn't and "blew the whistle" to the Media and Congress which prompted the FAA to do a "CYA" maneuver very quickly. Same thing happened with the double grounding of the American Airlines MD-80 fleet (they wrapped the wires the "wrong way" so they had to do it again even though the Airworthiness Directive said nothing about which way they had to be wrapped - clockwise or counterclockwise). The FAA, while supposedly a regulatory agency is also filled with a lot of political appointees, so the politics are something you have to deal with.