When you look at the damage the skin is ripped off and outward along a zipper row of fasteners and bent forward … and remained bent that way for many hours in flight…
suggests a significant overpressure (build up) acting inside to out …
a hole in a fairing would not immediately get me excited… if no lines of any kind would be cut … and the pressure fuselage has no damage …
Common sense suggests that for the pilots the difficult thing would be to find out the presence and level of:
1. first damage … for example a bolt flying,
2. immediate second damage … for example a tire being blown as a consequence, …( but they did not report a flat until now and the photo does not show that)… where the pressure (or frags) rips off a piece of fairing,
3. delayed third damage… for example minor damage by either 1. or 2. which initially does not show up on instruments but can get worse over time … for example lines or skin damage progressing… especially when it hit a weak spot ..
So even with a mild event it would be wise to more closely monitor instruments, let a pilot or dead header do a walk around in the cabin/fuselage, instruct the ccw to report unusual issues, … for such a long flight and over water the risk of 3. increases and the workload for pilots increases,
burning fuel and reducing weight reduces other risks, … for example with gear damage…
next to continue or return/divert an option would be to change your route in flight to pass closer to acceptable airports… when that’s not possible, based on criteria, it might be wise to divert or return…
A late flight engineer always told me helping in cases like this was the main function of an FE … his favourite example being a long tear in a wing/surface, where the pilots wanted to ground and he said no problemo …
So it’s up to the pilots these days to find the proper compromise.
And an interesting case for pilotless flying design studies.
For example (one of many questions based on this incident alone) … does a future “aircraft system (which today still includes aircraft plus pilots plus ccw plus (some knowledgable) passengers)” have to recognise that “something” happened, instead of recognising that a “specific thing” happened…and how does that compare with a piloted aircraft (also see the remark above about pilots being surprised about the degree of damage after landing).
Last edited by A0283; 3rd Jul 2022 at 12:48.