Salon :: Tech & Business

Ask the pilot: Did Southwest put its passengers in danger when it recently ran afoul of the FAA?

Southwest Airlines is in trouble. As you've probably heard, the nation's sixth largest carrier was forced to temporarily ground dozens of Boeing 737 jetliners that had not been properly inspected. The airline has since issued an open apology to customers, while the Federal Aviation Administration is proposing a record $10.2 million fine. "The FAA is taking action against Southwest Airlines," said Nicholas Sabatini, the agency's associate administrator, "for failing to follow rules that are designed to protect passengers and crew. We expect the airline industry to fully comply with all FAA directives and take corrective action." <P>In this case, the directives he's talking about pertain to fuselage fatigue inspections that are specific to 737s. Such inspections were mandated in the aftermath of a 1988 Aloha Airlines incident. Cracking along lap joints in the Aloha <a href="http://dir.salon.com/topics/airplanes/">plane</a>'s outer skin caused an 18-foot section of the cabin to peel away during flight, resulting in the death of a flight attendant and one of the most <a href="http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/index.htm">heart-stopping emergency landings</a> of all time. The aircraft had been in service for 19 years, and completed tens of thousands of short-haul inter-island flights. Repeated pressurization cycles, possibly exacerbated by long-term exposure to corrosive salt in Hawaii's sea breezes, allowed the crack to propagate. Since then, airline maintenance procedures have been revised to better monitor structural fatigue. Boeing and the FAA developed a careful schedule of inspections dependent on both total airframe hours and number of takeoffs and landings, or "cycles," as they're called. <p>...</p><img src="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/tech/~4/255276284" height="1" width="1"/>

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