Originally Posted by
b1lanc
Depending upon how many were inspected, that's an interesting stat for two reasons - the airframes with the most likely number of high cycles seems pretty clean. As I understand from SW, the 700s mostly stayed with the blended winglets, more of the 800 series were converted to the split.
Even more curious since the Jet Airways being modified by Boeing (possibly for Prime) and the original culprits were 800s?
There had been comments earlier that the pickle fork manufacturing process had been changed, with the newer method no longer hogging the piece out of a block of aluminum, but rather starting with a preformed part.
If the change in manufacturing process is a factor, one would expect the older aircraft to show few problems.