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Hole Forms in Southwest Jet During Flight

Incident follows FAA inspection flap

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.Com

July 14, 2009

Some passengers said they heard a loud noise. When they looked up, they noticed that a hole, approximately one foot by one foot, had opened in the top of the plane.

The hole created a terrifying roar and immediately depressurized the cabin, causing oxygen masks to fall from the overhead compartment. The plane made an emergency landing at Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia.

Despite the damage to the plane, the aircraft made a smooth landing and passengers waited for a replacement aircraft to take them to Baltimore.

Southwest Airlines said it will immediately inspect all of its Boeing 737 300 series, the type of plane involved in the incident. The 300 series is the oldest of the 737s in the Southwest fleet, and the airline operates 181 of them. The planes are an average of 15 years old.

Just over a year ago the Federal Aviation Administration recommended a $10 million fine against Southwest for flying planes too long between inspections. Southwest said the missed inspections were an oversight, and after discovering the error, the airline said it quickly reinspected all the aircraft for cracks. It says the inspections were mostly routine and redundant and that flight safety was never compromised.

The FAA-mandated inspections are designed to find tiny cracks in an aircraft's fuselage before they can get bigger and compromise the structural integrity of the plane. Since a modern jetliner may be used for 30 years or more, these inspections are supposed to find the kinds of problems than can occur as an aircraft ages.

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