Yuma, AZ – Southwest Airlines says inspectors have found cracks similar to those that caused an airplane to lose pressure and make an emergency landing have been found in two more of its planes.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Southwest says in a statement Sunday that small, subsurface cracks were found in the two planes. The airline says inspectors will evaluate further and more repairs will be performed before the planes are returned to service.
A flight carrying 118 people rapidly lost cabin pressure after the plane’s fuselage ruptured — causing a 5-foot-long tear — just after takeoff from Phoenix on Friday. Pilots made a controlled descent from 34,400 feet into Yuma, Ariz. No was injured.
Authorities say inspectors have found evidence of extensive cracking that hadn’t been discovered during routine maintenance before Friday’s flight.
We were always led to believe that any decompression like this would result in catastrophic failure. Evidently, the previous generations of engineers did some good work. I hope the more current planes, ie: 787, 380 and even the 320’s are built with the same strength.
We were also led to believe that failures like this should not happen. The business model of airlines might have changed, some of these planes might have had more operations, albeit short ones, that stress the frame more often than planes used once or twice a day. The authorities might have to develop guidelines that will either retire a plane or make it too costly to maintain after a certain number of operations/hours/years. Because airlines are important yet fragile economically nobody wants to hurt the airlines but safety is being sacrificed.
This particular aircraft was over 15 years old, and the plane was found with numerous cracks. Further, it has been reported that the oxygen masks did not deploy for 45 to 60 seconds. There has to be a system, where the passenger would be able to manually retrieve the oxygen mask in an emergency, in case it fails to come down, within 15 seconds. Time and time again, we’veseen caes where FAA inspectors and/or airline mechanics are negligent and cause either near fatal or fatal accidents. I bring to mind the 1979 crash at O’Hare of a DC-10, where over 250 people were killed, because part of the attachments of an engine, were not installed properly. Also, the near fatal crash of another airliner into the Atlantic Ocean in 1983, because the mechanics didn’t install the O rings properly.
I seem to recall that several years ago a Hawaii Air 737 lost a sixteen foot section of the cabin roof. The plane managed to land safely. The only fatality was a flight attendant who was not seat belted in. The plane looked like a convertible with the top down.