Trou dans fuselage de 737-300 Southwest

Après l'atterrissage non prévu d'un B 737-300 de la Southwest à Charleston suite à une dépressurisation brutale,

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la compagnie va inspecter toute sa flotte de 181 B 737-300 ( tout le reste de la flotte B 737-500 et NG )

Sur Flight, les deux photos font réfléchir :

Southwest Airlines is inspecting its Boeing 737-300 fleet after one of its aircraft diverted after depressurising, apparently after being holed in its upper fuselage.

The aircraft had been operating flight 2294 from Nashville to Baltimore-Washington but diverted to Yeager Airport near Charleston, West Virginia.

Southwest says it has sent maintenance personnel to Yeager to assess the aircraft and assist the National Transportation Safety Board in determining the cause of the depressurisation

Initial crew reports, says the carrier, indicate that the incident is related to a "small-sized hole located approximately mid-cabin", near the top of the aircraft.

Images carried by local Charleston media indicatethat the hole is in the upper fuselage just ahead of the vertical fin. An internal photo purporting to show the damage also indicates it to be around seat row 21, which would be situated about three rows from the back of the cabin.

Southwest has not confirmed the serial number of the aircraft involved, although an unconfirmed report indicates it is 26602, a 15-year old airframe.

None of the 126 passengers and five crew members was injured in the event, which occurred around 30min into the 16:05EST service and prompted deployment of oxygen masks.

But Southwest Airlines says it has initiated an inspection of all 737-300 aircraft, in an "abundance of caution", adding that it expects minor disruption to its schedule today while this is completed.

Southwest's oversight regime ran into problems last year when the US FAA stated that it had been operating nearly 50 737 aircraft without meeting requirements for repetitive inspection to detect fatigue cracks in the fuselage.

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Le NTSB prend l'enquête sur ce "trou dans le plafond" à son compte !

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The [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] are investigating to determine what caused rippage on the ceiling of a Southwest jet that forced the plane to make an emergency landing Monday evening.

Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the NTSB is taking the lead in the investigation, but both agencies are looking into the incident.

The plane was flying from Nashville to Baltimore and made an emergency landing in Charleston, W. Va., around 5:10 p.m. on Monday evening when a piece of the plane’s fuselage tore away from the aircraft, leaving a hole the size of a football, the FAA confirmed.

Lunsford said the football-size hole was located near an overhead baggage bin toward the back of the plane over the aisle. The hole was visible from the cabin, and the natural process of decompression at 34,000 feet caused the plane's oxygen masks to fall down as pilots made an emergency landing.

After the incident, Southwest Airlines said it was inspecting its other jets. The airline has 181 737-300 jets in its fleet.

The Boeing 737 was made in 1994, making it 15 years old, according to the FAA.

Lunsford said “it’s hard to say what might have caused it” at this point. The NTSB and the FAA will investigate all possibilities, he said, including metal fatigue or the possibility of external damage to the aircraft.

Lunsford said the hole was rectangular in shape and located right where the tail section begins to rise.

Planes, he said, are generally built in a manner where every few inches there is a rib or an enforcement to preserve the aircraft’s strength. He added that when metal fails, it typically stops at the next strong point in the aircraft's design.

Earlier this year, the Dallas Business Journal reported that Southwest Airlines agreed to pay a $7.5 million civil penalty to the FAA.

The FAA said Southwest agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle the case, but added that the amount could double if the airline failed to meet safety improvements outlined by the two parties in an agreement signed this year.

This agreement was the result of a $10.2 million civil penalty the FAA proposed for Southwest in March of 2008 after investigating the airline for operating 59,791 flights on 46 planes without checking the fuselage for what is known as fatigue cracking — or threats to the skin of the aircraft.

Lunsford with the FAA said investigators will check any airworthiness directives that applied to the aircraft involved in Monday's incident. "They'll look at which airworthiness directives effected this aircraft, were they done, did they apply
to what occurred here," he said. Lunsford said if not, investigators will try to determine what additional steps may need to be taken.

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Quelques liens renvoyant sur des videos et photos :

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Curieux, une AD de la FAA du mois de mai 2009

"

inspections of Boeing 737
fuselages "for any chafing or crack in the fuselage skin."

Le papier du CS Monitor ( lien dans l'article sur l'AD ) :

The directive applied to the tail-fin area of the plane, just a few feet from where the football-sized hole developed on Monday during Southwest Flight 2294 from Nashville, Tenn., to Baltimore. The Boeing 737-300 was carrying 131 people and made an emergency landing in West Virginia with no injuries.

Federal investigators are now scouring the plane's maintenance records for a clue as to what caused the fuselage skin to peel away.

The plane, which went into service in 1994, had undergone regularly scheduled maintenance and inspections, and no problems were found, Southwest Airlines said Thursday. In addition, notes Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis, "Boeing and the FAA have confirmed there are no regulations or service bulletins that call for skin inspections in that area."

But the new FAA inspection regulation issued in May, called an airworthiness directive (AD), does affect an area not far away from where the hole in the Southwest plane developed. The AD was issued as a result of an "[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]" in another Boeing 737 in
2004.

The May AD required much more detailed inspections of the fuselage around the tail-fin area. The FAA estimated that the old inspection methods would take only two hours, while the new, more detailed inspection was estimated to take 15 hours. The inspections are supposed to be done after every 9,000 cycles (one cycle is each time a plane takes off and lands).

It's unclear whether the Southwest plane that developed the hole had undergone the new inspection procedure. The National Transportation Safety Board has impounded the plane's maintenance records as part of its investigation.

At this point, the FAA says, there appears to be no direct connection between the AD and Monday's incident, but there could be an indirect one.

"One possibility is that in doing the work that was required by that AD, mechanics may have had to walk on the area where the incident occurred. But we just don't know because the investigation is at such an early stage," says Les Dorr, an FAA spokesman. "But there's nothing to suggest at this point the two are directly connected."

In March, Southwest paid the FAA a $7.5 million fine, the second largest in FAA history, for flying 46 Boeing 737s without performing mandatory inspections for fuselage cracks in 2007.

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Si la FAA avait été irréprochable ( avec Southwest ).... le feuilleton n'en serait pas un.

Ça doit faire tout bizarre :

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Une attaque frontale sur la FAA dans le Lancaster Eagle Gazette :

THE primary purpose of the Federal Aviation Administration is the assurance of safety in both private and commercial civil aeronautics. To accomplish this mission, it has promulgated many regulations from the Office of Aviation Safety.

- The largest and most complex part of the FAA is the Flight Standards Service, which is responsible for the oversight and enforcement of all aspects of flight safety, including air and ground controllers, radar systems, pilot training and the maintenance and inspection of aircraft.

- The AFS has come under increasing criticism in recent years for failure to fully live up to a strict level of compliance to its chartered mission. The specific issues include:

- Failure to ground aircraft which were not airworthy

- Failure in staffing levels at air port control towers

- Failure to set adequate ice-condition standards

- Failure to improve de-icing procedures

- Failure to revise pilot-fatigue guidelines

The FAA inspectors failed to ground 117 of Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft because their managers did not enforce the requirement to inspect these planes' rudder problems and cracks that might rupture the body.

Under sworn testimony, FAA inspectors said their managers allowed the planes to go un-inspected and fly on nearly 60,000 flights because taking "aircraft out of service would have disrupted Southwest Airlines flight schedules."

Southwest agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine.

Then, on July 12, one of Southwest's Boeing 737's body cracked open at 33,000 feet. The cabin is pressured to a level of about 5,000 feet, allowing passengers to breathe relatively easily.

However, the pressure outside, at 33,000 feet, is less than one-quarter of that inside the cabin, creating stresses which stretch the cabin skin to about 8 feet greater than that at the airport.

The crack, the size of a football, was very near the rudder - an airplane cannot fly without a rudder.

In August 2006, the control tower at the Lexington, Kentucky airport had only one air controller. Two are required by the FAA since one must be dedicated to monitor the runways and the other for radar control of aircraft in flight. While busy with the radar, the single controller lost awareness that a Comair flight - a regional jet - was departing on the wrong runway.

It hit an obstruction at the end of the runway and killed 49 of the 50 on board.

Another Comair flight - a regional turboprop - while descending through 5,000 feet to land at Detroit Metro airport, crashed because of ice buildup on the wings. The National Transportation Board cited the FAA for not establishing minimum airspeeds during icing conditions.

- Failure by the FAA to improve regulations for de-icing resulted in the crash of Colgan Air flight 3497 in February of this year at Buffalo.

FAA is obligated to act on a NTSB recommendation, but in the case of de-icing procedures, it was still studying those 10 years after receiving the recommendations.

The NTSB has cited 250 fatalities in the past 16 years associated with pilot fatigue. It is strongly suggested as a contributing factor in the above Colgan crash. What is important is, notwithstanding the NTSB's recommendations, the FAA fatigue and rest guidelines , established in 1940, never have been updated, even though airplanes are now much faster, much more complicated to pilot and fly in almost any kind of weather.

- Even more astounding is that the FAA tried to revise these rules in 1995, but was unable to do so because the airline industry members could not agree.

It is little wonder that the FAA is cynically called the "Friend of America's Airlines."

The FAA is overdue to properly regulate the protection of the flying public.

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