The incident in Hawaii was the Aloha flight 243 737
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2001/Jan/18/118localnews1.html
The airframe had been poorly maintained and operated in a salty environment. There was a fatality, a Stewardess, not strapped in, was lost in the explosive decompression. I suppose the ‘fail-safe’ ‘rip-stop’ philosophy incorporated in the 707 and its descendants after the Comet I disasters saved this 737.
The redesign of the Comet could have been done with rectangular windows (with the correct corner radiuses) but I guess they needed a good PR story. It’s a bit curious that BOAC stayed loyal to the Comet but rejected the Vickers VC7 in the same timeframe as the Comet investigations
Boeing seem to life the more recent 737s at some 60,000 cycles but failures can happen earlier (thats statistics for you)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/business/06air.html?_r=0
I would once have assumed that sheet metal, pressed out in a mechanical or hydraulic press, would produce a reliably standard form but working briefly in a factory feeding sheet steel blanks into a press opened my eyes….some came out perfect, some cracked…I think it partly depended on the amount of lubrication there was between the press tool face and the blank
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