Southwest emergency raises plane inspection issues

The “hole in the ceiling” episode of one of its aging Boeing 737-300 planes was a potential “public relations nightmare” that Southwest seems to have overcome, so far at least, but it raised an issue that may have been overlooked in recent years: the inspection of often aging planes.
 

Southwest should not see any drop in passenger traffic or long-term difficulties but the airline may have to postpone immediate expansion plans to repair older aircraft, according to experts.
 

Some experts were speculating that Southwest may have been overusing its aging fleet of 737’s without doing more frequent maintenance checks. But Boeing itself essentially exonerated Southwest by publicly saying its 737’s were prone to metal fatigue much sooner than it had expected, causing cracks.
 

"Most likely, the impact will be brief and not devastating to Southwest’s reputation or bottom line," said George Hobica, founder of the travel website Airfarewatchdog.com., told the Los Angeles Times.
 

“It’s just a statistical event far more than it has anything to do with Southwest and how they operate the airline,” senior Boeing engineer Paul Richter said of the cracks.
 

That admission should also help salvage the airline’s reputation which some media said had suffered because of the incident. Forbes called it a “public relations nightmare.”
 

Though Southwest may escape maintenance blame in the episode, “it has not only brought renewed attention to the problem of aging planes, but also to problems in oversight of the airline industry,” wrote ProPublica.
 

Their blog cited a report released last year where the Transportation Department said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) failed to perform on-time inspections of the major airlines more than 300 times between the years 2005 and 2009.
 

Its record was the worst with Southwest: "The Southwest Airlines inspection office missed the most inspections at the required time intervals,” the report said.
 

A 2008 government report also found FAA oversight lagging as major airlines increasingly outsourced maintenance work to contractors in a drive to lower costs.
 

The well-publicized Southwest incident involved a plane making an emergency landing after a 5-by-1-foot section of the fuselage burst open 20 minutes after takeoff on a flight from Phoenix to Sacramento. Southwest canceled about 600 flights last weekend — which is about ten percent of its daily flights — to conduct inspections.
 

The incident was not as severe as some other cases. By comparison, American Airlines grounded nearly half of its fleet in 2008 and canceled 3,300 flights because of missed inspections.
 

The Southwest plane landed safely in Yuma, Ariz., with a flight attendant sustaining minor injuries.

Passengers reported being “terrified” by seeing blue sky in the hole above the cabin but another reason Southwest should quickly recover is because the incident had no serious injuries.
 

It involved one of the airline’s oldest models, the Boeing 737-300, which represents almost one-third of the airline’s fleet of 548 planes.
 

The FAA has ordered inspections of some 175 older Boeing 737s worldwide. The action initially will apply to a total of about 175 aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are registered in the US, the FAA said.
 

Most of those are operated by Southwest Airlines.
 

"Last Friday’s incident was very serious and could result in additional action depending on the outcome of the investigation," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
 

Southwest planes have an average age of 11.2 years, said the AP.
 

Boeing engineer Richter said the airplane manufacturer had expected the aluminum skin and the supporting joints on the planes to last through 60,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings before any concern about cracks. But the Southwest jet had nearly 40,000 cycles, according to federal regulators.
 

As the incident unfolded, some aviation safety experts speculated how much progress the industry had made on such issues as cracks, which burst into view when a large section of the roof of a 737 flown by Aloha Airlines ripped open in 1988 and a flight attendant was sucked out of the plane.
 

Large cracks are rare, though they seem to be appearing with more frequency in recent years, including an incident involving a larger Boeing 757 last year when a 1-foot by 2-foot hole opened up as the plane was flying at 31,000 feet.
 

Southwest announced late last year that it was buying 20 of the first larger and more fuel efficient 737-800s.
 

Airline consultant Robert Ditchey told the LA Times that Southwest may have to postpone such expansion plans and reassign its new aircraft to replace the older models that need to be repaired or replaced.
 

The airline may even have to drop some existing routes, he added.
 

Of the 1,113 737-300 planes built by Boeing, about 900 are still in service, according to the Fairfax, Va., aerospace research firm Teal Group Corp.
 

By David Wilkening