Southwest Cancels 70 More Flights as Inspections Continue
Don Nelson, via Associated Press
The five-foot hole that opened Friday in a 15-year-old Southwest Airlines jet, forcing an emergency landing in Yuma, Ariz.
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and JOSEPH BERGER
Published: April 4, 2011
Southwest Airlines said that it had canceled about 70 flights on Monday to inspect the aircraft after a five-foot hole ripped through the roof of one of its jets on Friday during a flight.
Related
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Hole in Southwest Jet Attributed to Cracks (April 4, 2011)
The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday that the hole was caused by fatigue cracks in the aluminum underskin of the lap joints in the plane, which was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 carrying 118 passengers. The incident unfolded with the sound of an explosion during the flight, terrifying passengers, some of whom reported feeling dizzy during the swift loss of cabin pressure.
Oxygen masks were released and at least two people passed out as the pilot guided the plane to an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona. No one was seriously injured.
On Sunday evening, the airline said inspections had detected subsurface cracks in the bodies of two other Boeing 737 jetliners similar to those found on that flight.
“Based on this incident and the additional findings, we expect further action from Boeing and the F.A.A. for operators of the 737-300 fleet worldwide,” Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
On Monday, the airline’s shares were down 2.5 percent in early trading.
In its statement on Monday, the airline said it continued to inspect aircraft and would be putting those aircraft that had “no findings” back into service. It said it expected to complete the inspections on Tuesday.
Late on Sunday, another Southwest flight carrying 142 people was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport because of a burning electrical smell in the passenger cabin, but the airline said it was unrelated to the issue affecting the flight on Friday.
The 737-300 model plane had been flying from Oakland, Calif. to San Diego, according to airport spokesman Harold Johnson, The Associated Press reported. No one was injured, and the passengers swapped aircraft and went on to their destination, a Southwest spokesperson, Whitney Eichinger, told The A.P.
The airline said on Monday that it was working to minimize the impact on customers of the flight cancellations related to Friday’s explosion.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the airline identified and fixed 21 cracks in the fuselage of the plane involved in the incident on Friday 11 months ago during a scheduled inspection that lasted more than a week. Outside airline maintenance specialists say such fatigue cracks are not uncommon in older jets.
Southwest Airlines has a history of maintenance problems. In 2008, the F.A.A. proposed a $10.2 million penalty, later reduced to $7.5 million, for Southwest’s failure to do mandatory inspections for fuselage fatigue cracking on some of its Boeing 737s.
The airline’s own in-depth inspection of the plane in March 2010 revealed 10 cracks in parts of the frame and 11 cracks in the “stringer clips,” which help secure the aircraft skin, according to Service Difficulty Reports listed on the F.A.A. Web site.
They were all repaired, the reports said. At that time, the plane had 45,944 flight hours.
A total of 288 Boeing 737-300s are flying for airlines in the United States and 931 worldwide, according to the F.A.A. Southwest said the 737-300s were the oldest planes in its fleet. Boeing, in a statement, said it had seen no reason to take fleetwide action involving the planes. The company said it was monitoring all of its in-service planes and helping Southwest and the N.T.S.B.
Douglas Clark, an airplane maintenance specialist with Expert Aviation Consulting, an Indianapolis business not involved with the investigation, said, “It’s amazing it didn’t rip open further.” Metal fatigue, he said, “has been something that has plagued the industry for years.”
Duff Wilson contributed reporting.
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