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Holes appear in Southwest Airlines Boeing Aircraft.

garybUK

garybUK

Guest
Original poster
Jun 3, 2002
1,466
3
Surprised this hasn't been posted yet.

Small, sub-surface cracks have been found in three more Southwest Airlines planes like those thought to have caused another to develop a hole in its cabin roof mid-flight, officials say.
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Some of the 118 people on board the flight, which had just taken off from Phoenix, reported hearing a loud bang as a 1.5m-long gash appeared.

The hole caused a sudden drop in cabin pressure, forcing pilots to make a controlled descent from 10,485m (34,400ft) to a military base. No-one was seriously injured, though a flight attendant was slightly hurt.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12954335

I'd be surprised if they didn't find these on Continental's planes, those Boeings going across the pond are death traps.
 
If I am not mistaken, Southwest is actually one of the safer planes to fly on. I know they are in the process of retiring this fleet and bringing in a new one.

Either way, this is scarier then crap! I could not imagine having the plane rip open. Reminds me of the flight from Hawaii when a good portion of the top came off. Scary stuff!
 
Agreed, no matter who makes these aeroplanes they still are under immense stresses (pressure, temperature etc), but because airlines are under the kosh financially, unfortunately the stringent safety checks slip.

Really they need to make efficient and quick micro-fracture detection systems.
 
Holes is a bit dramatic. They are subsurface cracks and they're fixing them. I would fly Southwest over any airline given the choice based on their fleet. As already posted, they're supposed to retire their fleet and bring in new. I don't recall the last time a fleet was retired, I look at the American Airlines flights I have to be on for work and worry about **** randomly falling off the plane as people violently load their crap. It's happened twice since I've been flying with them. Random pieces of plastic shouldn't just end up on a seat.
 
This particular 737-300 was one of the oldest B733's still in service. Hell, a lot of aircraft you fly on are old as crap that can date back to the 70's and 80's.
 
rhett7660 said:
If I am not mistaken, Southwest is actually one of the safer planes to fly on. I know they are in the process of retiring this fleet and bringing in a new one.
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Agreed. Southwest has a total of one fatality under their belt - a plane overshot the runway while landing at MDW, broke through the fence and hit a car and killed a passenger in the car. If you don't count JetBlue and Virgin (since they're relatively new) then that's by far the lowest out of all major US carriers. I'd say they're pretty safe.

arkitect said:
You have to love that old internet hyperbole.
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Oh, the media has been just awful. I saw a reporter say "After the decompression, the plane rapidly descended to 10,000 feet in a matter of minutes" as if it was a mechanical problem that caused that to happen. Err, wrong. The pilot intentionally descended to get to more breathable air. He did what he was supposed to do.

I've flown Southwest before and will fly them again. If you don't want to fly an airline because they've had an accident or have older planes in their fleet, you won't be flying anywhere.
 
quagmire said:
This particular 737-300 was one of the oldest B733's still in service. Hell, a lot of aircraft you fly on are old as crap that can date back to the 70's and 80's.
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N632SW was the aircraft used in this flight. It is a young 14 year old -300 model.

BL.
 
yg17 said:
If you don't want to fly an airline because they've had an accident or have older planes in their fleet, you won't be flying anywhere.
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Tourists these days. Pfffft. No sense of adventure. ;)

A day or two after the American Airlines DC10 crash in 1979, I was one of only about 20 people on board an almost empty Singapore Airlines flight from Colombo. The other passengers booke don it having cancelled when they heard. Few people were willing to fly on a DC10 for a while.

I remember one or two memorable flights in Dakotas — one involved a door tied close with wire.
And don't get me get started on that short runway at Kai Tak…

*wistful sigh* Ahh those were the days. :p
 
arkitect said:
Tourists these days. Pfffft. No sense of adventure. ;)

A day or two after the American Airlines DC10 crash in 1979, I was one of only about 20 people on board an almost empty Singapore Airlines flight from Colombo. The other passengers booke don it having cancelled when they heard. Few people were willing to fly on a DC10 for a while.

I remember one or two memorable flights in Dakotas — one involved a door tied close with wire.
And don't get me get started on that short runway at Kai Tak…

*wistful sigh* Ahh those were the days. :p
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Simple fact of the matter is you have a better chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the airport than you do dying in an airplane crash.

And that's why airport security pisses me off so much sometimes. If they care so much about protecting people, they should let us bring our damn water bottles on the plane and focus more on keeping drunk drivers and nearly blind old people off the road.
 

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Trivia: Can anyone tell me when the last time someone died on a U.S. plane within U.S. airspace was? I'm talking about planes flying passengers, not personal aircraft like Cessnas or delivery planes.

The answer might surprise you.
 
Seriously? You would have thought that Airlines would learn from history and be more careful about these things.

I know we don't know the details of the incident ,but it looks like the same issue here with Aloha Airlines Flight 243.

Luckily it didn't turn out as bad.
 
wordoflife said:
Seriously? You would have thought that Airlines would learn from history and be more careful about these things.

I know we don't know the details of the incident ,but it looks like the same issue here with Aloha Airlines Flight 243.

Luckily it didn't turn out as bad.
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they learn but each time near information is brought in. Look at how little data the airline industry has to work with. They only have a small handful of events and each time they adjust to account for it.

Aloha Airlines showed high cycle damage. This one by southwest just increases it and shows more new issues.

Remember it is hard to make a statical model out of just a few events. Also that even is over 20 years ago. Not as relevant today as many things changed afterwards. This is a new piece of information and they will adjust to account for it.
 
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