Large hole discovered after Southwest flight makes emergency landing

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- A Southwest Airlines flight landed safely at a military base in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday with what passengers described as a 3-foot hole in the fuselage of the Boeing 737.

"I heard a loud popping sound ... about three or four minutes before ... then it blew open," passenger Greg Hanson told CNN affiliate KOVR.

"You can see the blue sky from your seat," he said in a phone interview from the plane.

Hanson described the hole as being about 3 or 4 feet long and about a foot wide.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/01/arizona.flight.diverted/index.html

[postulater]

1. But it's a dry heat.

[uppityperson]

2. glad they landed it without anyone getting hurt

[jberryhill]

3. Sunroof

That wasn't supposed to be until next year's model.

[truthisfreedom]

5. It's a work in progress. They could just wrap the plane with a few layers of clear pallet wrap

and call it good.

[jberryhill]

9. A lot of foreign airports have the machines right there in the terminal

Though on US bound flights, I always wonder what TSA does with those, or even why people do it in the first place.

[cheneyschernobyl]

12. Duct tape; don't forget about the duct tape! n/t

[truthisfreedom]

4. In other news, Boeing has recalled all 6,638 model 737 planes today, citing

popping noises that can leave 1' by 3-4' holes in the fuselage.

[grahamhgreen]

6. This is totally normal. There are three foot holes all over the planet.

[Trajan]

7. Sounds like a poor repair job, perhaps ...

This kind of defect is quite rare .... Yeah; Planes can go wrong in so many ways, but blowing open skin panels (or worse) is a pretty rare event .... One event that comes to mind was the Hawaiian Air flight where the roof ripped off a good 15 feet ... So yeah, it does happen, but still ... not much ....

Pop ? ..... Rivets popping ? .... A structural member breaking down ? ....... We'll see soon enough ....

[Hawkowl]

10. Metal fatigue

I would guess this airplane has many thousands of "cycles" on it. A "cycle" is considered one take off and landing. It wouldn't be uncommon to have 30,000 cycles on an aircraft with this type of structural failure. An airplane is basically a thick aluminum tube, like a big beer can. The constant pressurizing and depressurizing of the airplane is like your hands flexing the beer can back and forth. Flex the beer can 30,000 times and it starts to come apart. This will happen to EVERY airplane if it is operated long enough. It is simply the nature of the element aluminum.

[IScreamSundays]

14. Southwest's planes are very very old.

They have great fares though.

Oh yeah, and bags fly free.

[PoliticAverse]

8. Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a 737...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

[Trajan]

11. That's the one ...

Pretty scary ....

[LawnKorn]

13. But if you fire a gun on an airplane, the bullet hole will let the air out and kill everyone

The bullet will puncture the pressure hull and the entire contents of the plane will be sucked out. I saw it happen in a James Bond movie.

[alp227]

15. CNN: Southwest to ground 79 planes...

(CNN) -- Southwest Airlines announced Saturday that it is grounding 79 planes for inspection following an incident in which one of its flights was forced to make an emergency landing after a 3- to 4-foot hole tore open in the fuselage of the plane.

The plane -- which had been traveling from Phoenix to Sacramento, California -- managed to land safely at a military base in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday. There authorities "discovered a hole in the top of the aircraft," the company said earlier.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused the "depressurization event" and have "decided to keep a subset of its Boeing 737 fleet out of the flying schedule to begin an aggressive inspection effort in cooperation with Boeing engineers," according to a company statement.

Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/04/02/arizona.flight.diverted/index.html