Southwest Airlines flight suffers hole in roof

I love to see aircraft return to service, but fixing a middle-aged out of production short haul (i.e. relatively cheap as opposed to a wide-body) jet does surprise me after what occurred and the publicity it received.

It is all down to economics; someone, somewhere will have done the sums.

Personally, nothing I have read warrants it being scrapped. A repair skin, and revised inspection schedule. Good to go.

And if said truck punches a hole into the fuselage as often happens? Should the plane get scrapped then also?

Of course not, an accident doesn’t bring into question the integrity of the entire fuselage.

But to be fair, none of those cases were caused by fatigue of the pressure vessel.

Damage from an uncontained emgine failure or bad cargo door latch isn’t quite as damning as the main fuselage popping open. That might give passengers the worry that the whole structure is suspect.

I love to see aircraft return to service, but fixing a middle-aged out of production short haul (i.e. relatively cheap as opposed to a wide-body) jet does surprise me after what occurred and the publicity it received.

Amazing about the JAL DC-8 returning to service. I read that on the site awhile ago and I remembered a period article (probably Aviation Week, my favorite as a child…dad would bring them home from the office) about the jet returning to service.
It makes you wonder why USAir didn’t fix the Hudson river A320?
Leading to the question, perhaps they really don’t build them “the way they used to.”:D

I believe the United 747 that lost the forward cargo door in flight between Hawaii and the mainland U. S. (there were fatalities) was repaired, as was the MD-80 at Delta that had an uncontained engine failure in Florida.

The most extreme example I have ever heard of, though no fatalities, was of the famous DC-8 “Shiga” that landed short of the runway in San Francisco bay in 1968. The airplane was fished out of the bay and repaired at United’s very extensive shops and placed back into service, I believe it flew 30 more years. More details here: http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Shiga-SFBay.htm

So, there have been lots of airplanes damaged extensively and repaired. I just recalled these off the top of my head, I’m sure there are many more.

This particular SWA 737 incident is very interesting to me, I’m wondering if there might have been a manufacturing defect when the fuselage was constructed, undetected damage at some point in service, or improperly made aluminum that caused the failure. It happened in a spot where one would not normally expect damage.

I’m sure this aircraft will be patched up and will fly on.
Isn’t the Qantas B747 that suffered an explosion in its cargo hold and hole in its fuselage still flying? Unless passengers knew its registration, they’d be none the wiser.

And if said truck punches a hole into the fuselage as often happens? Should the plane get scrapped then also?

The vast majority of future passengers don’t not know a 747 from an A320, let alone know the plane sitting at their gate has had a small tear in the fuselage repaired

Scrapping was never an option from what I hear.
The Aircraft has only done half the number of hours and cycles its certified for.
So plenty life left.

I would have thought the PR consequences would have prompted management towards recycling the plane.
The media will be watching…and you and I may know its safe, but the general public…I don’t think so.
Wonder if they’ll try switching the N number to sneak it back in the fleet?

Having a fair size hole open in a fuselage is a bit different from fixing a bird strike or replacing a wingtip after a catering truck dented the old one.
Catering truck…what am I talking about, Southwest is a low cost carrier…there is no catering!:diablo:

I would have thought they’d scrap it…after ferrying it to a suitable place.

Scrapping was never an option from what I hear.
The Aircraft has only done half the number of hours and cycles its certified for.
So plenty life left.

Besides, fuselage dinks, dents and tears are repaired often. The old a plane gets the more patches you’ll see on it’s fuselage.

I would have thought they’d scrap it…after ferrying it to a suitable place.

Naa. A big scab patch will cover that. They might replace the skins eventualy.

Rgds Cking

How come if many LCCs in Europe are operating relatively short lease agreements and replacing old with new it does not work across the pond?

IIRC, Southwest might owns its planes, not lease.

Maybe…
1. Just being cheap
2. The damage isn’t that bad from a technical standpoint…it just sounds bad if you’re a layman or passenger,
3. Perhaps the plane has undergone upgrades and it wouldn’t be cost effective to scrap it…
Or to quote from Wiki… “Newer Boeing 737-300 variants are being upgraded with retrofitted electronic flight decks and blended winglets to reduce operational costs. The retrofits will make the 737-300s operationally compatible with the 737-700 and support the airline’s move to embrace the Global Positioning System enabled Required Navigation Performance systems”.

I see that they didn’t retire their last 737-200 until 2005 (!)…so they like to get their money’s worth out of them.

Judging from what I see on Wiki…its average fleet utilization is something like 7 hrs a day, so that plane is right in line with fleet average. With 173 733s on the line, Southwest better hope the fatigue isn’t widespread.

Ugh – Low Cost taken to the limit – in fact way beyond the limit

Ugh – Low Cost taken to the limit – in fact way beyond the limit.:mad:

Maybe they should just call it a sun roof option:rolleyes:

How come if many LCCs in Europe are operating relatively short lease agreements and replacing old with new it does not work across the pond?

There is an AP story today reporting that the crack/hole has been patched and painted (?..perhaps just primer?) and flown from Yuma to Dallas without pressurization. From there it will be flown to Greensboro , NC for permanent repairs.

I would have thought they’d scrap it…after ferrying it to a suitable place.

Moderator Message

And then there was one…..

Regards

GA

And yet, on the very same page there is a thread that discusses this very topic. 😉

The Southwest Airlines-incident

I was quite shocked about the Southwest Airlines-incident, where the fuselage ruptured and left a gaping hole in the roof. I thought this was a unique happening, but checking the internett, I learned that this has happened several times:

The last Southwest incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_812

Can you believe they actually has had a similar event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_2294

The worst incident of this kind I guess; Aloha Airlines Flight 243: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

Qantas Flight 30: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_30

China Airlines Flight 611: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611

And these examples are just a few… Scary!

Vega ECM – you might find your answer in this thread on Airliners.net

Does anyone know if the 737-800 fuselage is certified as a damage tolerance design or uses damage tolerance inspection philosophy? I’m pretty sure its wing is certified as a damage tolerance design.

Was the original 60’s 737 a safelife design philosophy ? (i.e. designed and sized so as not to crack hence no inspections required). I guess it would have been designed at about time the change in design approach occurred.

Given the first inspection period in the WSJ article is close to or even above the design life of the airframe, if the 737-800 fuselage is certified as a damage tolerance design how has the FAA let Boeing get away with this? ……given the Alhoa incident and others this would be a really shocking error…….. allowing Boeing to get the weight saving benefit but within the vital safety inspection burden.

It seems the Boeing 737 series has had a lot of structural failures compared to other types. By comparison, the DC-8 and DC-9 series were very strong, Delta just retired some DC-9s last year that were 42-43 years old and had 90-100,000 landings on them. They had about the same nubmer of hours, since DC-9’s historically ran flights of about 1 hour, or slightly less.

Some rules of thumb, in the U.S. an airplane in domestic service flies about 3,000 hours a years, give or take, and the average flight is between 1 and 2 hours. An international airplane for a U.S. airline will often fly close to 5,000 hours a year, and the “average” flight duration is usually 6.5-10 hours. Keep in mind these are averages. Consider a flag operation b767-300 operating from the U.S. making 2 flights a day, at 8 hours each 9 (7 over, 9 back from Europe). Thats 730 flights and 5600 hours. Then consider maintenance down time, and you can see that the 600-650 flights and 4,800-5,000 hours a year is reasonable.

The numbers I quote are very general. Southwest generally flies “short” legs with their famous 15 minute turnarounds, getting better aircraft utilization than just about any other airline in the world. 7 1.2 hour flights a day is reasonable for their network.

Boeing Miscalculated Risks

Boeing Co. said Tuesday that its engineering and safety experts were caught off guard by the recent rupture of the fuselage of a Southwest Airlines Co. jet, which exposed a miscalculation in the aircraft maker’s formula for assuring the safety of the plane.

Hear are some better pictures of the removed section.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373701/Southwest-airlines-forced-land-flight-cracks-5-planes.html

Sorry it’s from the Daily mail

Rgds Cking