Originally Posted by
MickG0105
Thank you for the follow up.
So it looks we're seeing the cracking problem manifest itself in some aircraft built before 2004 but right across the whole NG range (-600, -700, -800 and -900), and both with winglets and without.
This may simply be a coincidence but Boeing moved the Commercial Airplanes - Fabrication Division's complex machining from their Auburn, Washington plant to their Portland, Oregon facility between April 2003 and January 2005. Among the parts packages that were transitioned from Auburn to Portland were pickle forks. The move gets mentioned in a Boeing Frontiers article. It's probably unrelated but you never know.
SAS are now in a process of changing from Boeing to Airbus, but a number of their 737’s are from the same time period as the two with cracks.
Yet, only two of them had cracks.
Not sure how many cycles they have, but they fly a large network of shorter domestic and Scandinavian routes, so I expect them to have a rather high number. 30000 and above?
Why one aircraft but not the one produced at the same time, operating in the same environment/area and with the same amount cycles ?
This is what puzzles me.