Southwest Passengers Stew as Airline Inspects Jets

Southwest Airlines jets lead a hard life.

The high-adrenaline, low-cost carrier specializes in short flights and quick turnaround times, meaning its plans go through a daily ordeal of take-offs, pressurization, depressurization and landing, only to quickly taxi back out and do it all again.

Now and then, this kind of wear and tear takes its toll, as happened Friday one a piece of the fuselage blew off a Southwest flight en route from Phoenix to Sacramento. The aircraft was at 35,000 feet when passengers heard an explosion one described as similar to a gunshot.

The crew made an emergency landing at a military air base near Yuma, Arizona, and another jet was dispatched to take the 118 passengers on to Sacramento. No one was hurt, although a flight attendant and a passenger fainted.

Southwest grounded its 79 Boeing 737-300s Saturday to inspect the fuselage of each airplane for cracks or other signs of wear, creating delays of two hours or more at airports around the country.

Southwest's fleet is made up entirely of 737s, though not all are 737-300s. The airplane involved in Friday's incident was 15 years old.

It's not the first incident involving 737 fuselages. Southwest had a similar episode two years when a hole ripped open during a flight bound for Baltimore.

In 1988, a flight attendant was killed and several passengers injured when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737's fuselage ripped open during a flight from Hilo to Honolulu.

Analysts noted at the time that Aloha, like Southwest, was a predominantly short-haul carrier that flew numerous daily flights around the Hawaiian islands.

Cancellations

Southwest said Saturday that it expected to cancel about 300 flights as it worked to examine the damaged airplane and inspect similar aircraft.

"The safety of our customers and employees is our primary concern," said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "We are working closely with Boeing to conduct these proactive inspections and support the investigation. We also are working aggressively to attempt to minimize the impact to our Customers' travel schedules today.