Hole found in plane that took off from Miami

[Sargent_Schultz]

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2010/10/hole_found_in_plane_that_took.html

[paul929207]

I'd hate to go thru something like that.

[world~citizen]

I'd hate to go thru something like that.

 

Yah, no kidding...

 

Looks like someone is going to have some "splaining" to do. :eek:

[FlyerTalker]

I love this "money quote" from the article:

 

A man aboard the plane said

passengers panicked

after oxygen masks were released and the pilot put the jet into a sharp descent.

 

"It was pretty

chaotic and confusing

. It just was kind of surreal.

We kind of looked at each other

when the masks came from the ceiling and thought, 'This is it,'" said Edward Croce, 34, of Braintree, Mass.

 

Croce tried to send a goodbye text message to his son back home, but his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

 

 

Rather than grabbing the oxygen mask and tightening the seatbelt, they looked at each other. Probably like the deer in the headlights. Or panicked. Wonder how many of them actually paid attention to the safety demo.

 

Oh, and should the pilot have keep the aircraft at cruise altitude and let hypoxia set in.....?? Of course he is trained to get below 10,000 ft as quickly as possible.

[Sargent_Schultz]

This was what caught my attention:

"The 1-foot-by-2-foot hole opened in the roof shortly after American Airlines Flight 1640 took off from Miami bound for Boston on Tuesday night."

 

That and it was a 757.

 

Between this and the terrorist activity yesterday, really looking forward to my flight on a 757 in a few days.

 

as far a unexpected decompression of a airplane goes, I think there would be some confusion and panic until sanity or FA/Pilot instructions regained control.

[fbgd]

Not the first time this has happened in recent memory

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31902513/

 

...and quite a while ago

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811

[world~citizen]

I love this "money quote" from the article:

 

A man aboard the plane said

passengers panicked

after oxygen masks were released and the pilot put the jet into a sharp descent.

 

"It was pretty

chaotic and confusing

. It just was kind of surreal.

We kind of looked at each other

when the masks came from the ceiling and thought, 'This is it,'" said Edward Croce, 34, of Braintree, Mass.

 

Croce tried to send a goodbye text message to his son back home, but his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

 

 

Rather than grabbing the oxygen mask and tightening the seatbelt, they looked at each other. Probably like the deer in the headlights. Or panicked. Wonder how many of them actually paid attention to the safety demo.

 

Oh, and should the pilot have keep the aircraft at cruise altitude and let hypoxia set in.....?? Of course he is trained to get below 10,000 ft as quickly as possible.

 

My take is no one complained that the plane went into a dive. It was more in the nature of observation that they felt they were about to die...a possibility I myself would not have ruled out were I there. :eek:

 

It is interesting that there was apparently no medical assistance noticed by the passenger.

 

And now, we get to worry about maintenance issues with older 757s.

 

This hasn't been a good week for commercial aviation.

[kenish]

Not minimizing what happened but this is a testimony to the engineering of modern airliners and crew skill and experience. It was a non-event in the grand scheme of the universe.

 

I took pilot training on O2 systems....bottom line, if you see a mask dangling in front of your face put it on IMMEDIATELY and ask questions later. The other way around and you may not have the consciousness to ask the right questions. At airliner altitudes TUC (time of useful consciousness) is about 15 seconds.

[mudscraper]

Mid 1980s - sitting in the first class cabin in seat 1B on an EAL 727 at 37000ft. The flight attendant chime starts ringing numerous times in rapid succession. Cockpit door opens and the Second Officer, wearing an oxygen mask gives the thumbs down gesture to her. Nose of the aircraft pitches down significantly. Speed brakes deployed which of course creates quite the vibrations.

 

First class flight attendant sounds panicked as she tells passengers to sit down and extinguish any smoking materials. After a few minutes of this E ticket ride we level off and land at ATL (our flight was MIA-ORD). Turns out that the aft cargo door seal sprung a leak. No mask deployment during our descent.

 

In ATL we all got off the plane while repairs were made. The captain soothed nerves and answered all questions. He informed us that our rate of decent from 37000 to 12000ft was 7000ft per minute. The door seal was replaced and we continued on our journey.

[world~citizen]

Not minimizing what happened but this is a testimony to the engineering of modern airliners and crew skill and experience. It was a non-event in the grand scheme of the universe.

 

Our death is a non event in the grand scheme of the universe. :eek:

 

No. I would say that is a pretty significant event in the life of any aviator, much less passenger.

 

It will be interesting to see the established cause unravelled.

[kenish]

I think you missed my point- Nobody died, nobody was in at any signifcant risk....I'm sure we all have higher risk moments in our daily lives without realizing it. The hole in the fuselage shouldn't have happened but the airframe is designed to be robust to that sort of thing. The pilots train and re-train so it's a "routine emergency" and the O2 masks worked as designed to protect everyone on board. Something interesting to talk about however!

 

There was a decompression accident in Greece where nobody survived and a massive structural failure on an Aloha 737 which miraculously landed but with a few tragic fatalities...I wouldn't have made the same comments in those situations.

[Sargent_Schultz]

 

It will be interesting to see the established cause unravelled.

 

Metal fatigue and lax inspections, me thinks. The result could have easily been catastrophic. A lot of people dodged the bullet.

 

Interesting that American refused to disclose the age of the plane. :cool:

[world~citizen]

I think you missed my point- Nobody died, nobody was in at any signifcant risk....I'm sure we all have higher risk moments in our daily lives without realizing it. The hole in the fuselage shouldn't have happened but the airframe is designed to be robust to that sort of thing. ...

 

A flight crew has no idea how badly a situation like that will deteriorate. In fact, until inspection results are published, we have no idea how bad the situation actually was.

 

I think people on board may be forgiven is they were scared witless.

[fbgd]

Interesting that American refused to disclose the age of the plane. :cool:

 

:confused: Aircraft age is very easy to determine if you know the registration of the aircraft.

[Sargent_Schultz]

:confused: Aircraft age is very easy to determine if you know the registration of the aircraft.

 

Of course it is. I'm certain American will be more forthcoming with the authorities investigating the incident than they were with the media.

[kenish]

Very easy information to find, it just takes 5 minutes to "google past" the mass media. :)

 

FYI the AA plane is a 757, N626AA delivered on 8/14/90.

 

An almost identical incident happened to a Southwest 737 in summer of 2009. It is N387SW delivered on 6/28/94. The NTSB just released their findings...failure of the fuselage skin due to a fatigue crack. It sounds like there is nothing the airline could have done to catch the problem, although Boeing has since directed airlines to re-inspect certain areas of the skins. More important than calendar age is the number of flights a plane has flown. The 737 had flown 42,500 flights in 50,800 hours (typical of the short hops Southwest flys). I speculate the AA 757 has fewer cycles and is younger where fatigue life is concerned. The Aloha Airlines accident raised awareness of the issue...it was very old, flew inter-island hops, and was exposed to the corrosive Hawaii climate. Even "low cycle" aircraft can have problems. Some 747-400s in the 90's had serious crack problems caused by the wrong aluminum being designed into the fuselage. The entire upper deck of affected birds had to be stripped to the bone and rebuilt!

 

Cracks and fatigue are normal on any large transport aircraft. The countermeasure is failsafe design and ensuring inspections find cracks before they become a problem.

 

And, I don't doubt passengers were scared beyond belief and had every right to be....especially if they didn't know much about aircraft or aviation and were nervous flyers to begin with!

[Sargent_Schultz]

Very easy information to find, it just takes 5 minutes to "google past" the mass media. :)

 

FYI the AA plane is a 757, N626AA delivered on 8/14/90.

 

 

It was easy enough to find in the article posted,

 

"The American jet is 20 years old and had gone through about 22,000 takeoffs and landings, Holloway said. American, which had refused to give the age of the plane, said its fleet of about 120 Boeing 757s averages 16 years, which its spokesman said "is considered mid-life by most in the industry."

[Sargent_Schultz]

The Aloha Airlines accident raised awareness of the issue..

 

Where there WAS a fatality.

 

Most of the prior aircraft were 737s, this was a 727.

[kenish]

Aloha was a 737, not a 727 which they never flew....and I mentioned "tragic fatalities" in my earlier post. Also I referred to it as an accident and AA and WN as incidents . The FAA and NTSB regs have detailed definitions of the difference, one being if there were fatalities.

[SkystheLimit]

Was the hole above the 1L or 1R door?

[Sargent_Schultz]

Aloha was a 737, not a 727

 

Yes. THIS incident was a 727.

[kenish]

Then please provide link(s) to a NTSB report, article, website, etc. (assuming we are both talking about Aloha Airlines 243 that lost most of the upper fuselage and made a miraculous emergency landing in Maui).

 

Otherwise I will assume you're confusing it with cracks found in Eastern Airlines' 727's...which were definitely a result of their negligent maintenence. Several people at EAL ended up behind bars for a string serious maintenance-related violations and doctoring of paperwork.

[Sargent_Schultz]

nope I typoed 727 for 757 (I'm thinking a 757-200) which is what THIS thread is about, prior to the 737 hijackings. :o:rolleyes:

[xpcdoojk]

Some things never change.

 

jc

[dforeigner]

Aircraft Accident Report

Aloha Airlines, flight 243, Boeing 737-200,

N73711, near Maui, Hawaii

April 28, 1988

NTSB Number AAR-89/03NTIS Number PB89-910404

available in hardcopyExecutive Summary: On April 28, 1988, at 1346, a Boeing 737-200, N73711, operated by Aloha Airlines Inc., as flight 243, experienced an explosive decompression and structural failure at 24,000 feet, while en route from Hilo, to Honolulu, Hawaii. Approximately 18 feet from the cabin skin and structure aft of the cabin entrance door and above the passenger floor line separated from the airplane during flight. There were 89 passengers and 6 crewmembers on board. One flight attendant was swept overboard during the decompression and is presumed to have been fatally injured; 7 passengers and 1 flight attendant received serious injuries. The flight crew performed an emergency descent and landing at Kahului Airport on the Island of Maui.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the Aloha Airlines maintenance program to detect the presence of significant disbonding and fatigue damage which ultimately led to failure of the lap joint a S-10L and the separation of the fuselage upper lobe. Contributing to the accident were the failure of Aloha Airlines management to supervise properly its maintenance force; the failure of the FAA to require Airworthiness Directive 87-21-08 inspection of all the lap joints proposed by Boeing Alert Service Bulletin SB 737-53A1039; and the lack of a complete terminating action (neither generated by Boeing nor required by the FAA) after the discovery of early production difficulties in the B-737 cold bond lap joint which resulted in low bond durability, corrosion, and premature fatigue cracking.

The Safety issues raised in this report include:

• The quality of air carrier maintenance programs and the FAA surveillance of those programs.
   
  
  
• The engineering design, certification, and continuing airworthiness of the B-737 with particular emphasis on multiple site fatigue cracking of the fuselage lap joints.
   
  
  
• The human factors aspects of air carrier maintenance and inspection for the continuing airworthiness of transport category airplanes, to include repair procedures and the training, certification and qualification of mechanics and inspectors.
  

Recommendations concerning these issues were addressed to the Federal Aviation Administration, Aloha Airlines, and the Air Transport Association.

 

 

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