Thank $DEITY it wasn't an Airbus.... :}

Charley West does have some challenging aspects but nothing to the point of overflying it if they needed down pronto, especially so if the crew was familiar with the airport.

It's no Aspen.

yssy.ymel, to speculate for just a minute - I would guess you hit it right on there.

Being a SWA -300, I can only imagine that it is a high cycle airframe. Despite the best safeguards in place, fatigue related failure can occur when least expected.

As stated, the uniform shaped hole suggests that the tear strips did their job.

Now what would have happened if a pax/hostie had been stood under the hole a la the Aloha incident....

I agree with West Coast, Charley West is a bit intimidating, mostly because it does look like you are landing on an aircraft carrier, granted a very long aircraft carrier. However, as he stated it is certainly no Aspen.

I have landed 727s and other smaller jets at CRW a few times, however, I am much more familiar with ASE. I'm sure the reason why they landed at CRW will come out in the near future.

But to be very honest, CRW would not have been my first choice, but then again, I was not flying the aircraft. I'm sure they had a very valid reason and I'm not going to second guess the crew.

Registration N387SW
Serial 26602
Line Number 2627

First Flight 16.06.94
Delivery Date 29.06.94

Airframe is apparently 15 years old. Not particularly elderly...

Good picture - you can even determine the (empty) edge rivnut's with their proper spacing - all indicative of a missing plate or antenna patch.

What? . . . No fatties sucked out James Bond style as in the movies?

Similar to B727 failure
 

Someplace there's a photo of a similar fuselage SKIN failure, on a B727. I can't find the photo, I see there are several B727 cases that read about the same as this B737 case, eg:

= = = \/ = = =

ASIAS BRIEF REPORT... ACCIDENT AND INCIDENT DATABASE
Report Number: 19881226056139C
Local Date: 26-DEC-88
City: CHARLESTON
State: WV
Airport Name: YEAGER
... MINOR
Aircraft Make: BOEING
Aircraft Model: 727-200
... Airframe Hrs: 68035
... EASTERN AIR LINES
NARRATIVE

AIRCRAFT EXPERIENCED RAPID DECOMPRESSION. EMERGENCY DESCENT AND LANDED. FUSELAGE SKIN FAILURE CAUSED PROBLEM.

and

CHI87IA067 January 25, 1987 B727-122, : N7015U EXTERIOR SKIN FAILED IN FATIGUE ... CRUISE ... LOST CABIN PRESSURE .... MASKS AUTOMATICALLY DEPLOYED.

68,035 hours TT

That's TEN YEARS airborne, god knows cycles. That's all?? :ok::ok:

aerial picture of CRW

File:20090121 0693 Yeager Airport.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well all's well that ends well. Post 2 shows somebody made a very definite decision and did a good job of slowing it all down in time. I agree with an earlier poster that at least one of the crew was probably familiar with the airport, and even if not, I still don't think it the worst decision ever made.

Hole in US plane forces landing
 

two things

one, does anyone have the full report on the 727 that had something similiar happen to it? will you post it?

two: alot has been made of my post questioning CRW as an emergency airport. I meant it as a thought provoker. IF the plane could have kept going to a better airport, the crew would have. So, I am saying that things might have been worse then they appeared.

Fatigue
 

yssy.ymel and Love_Joy
As somebody with a bit of experience of 737 Classic heavy maintenance I completely agree with you - fatigue crack. I've seen cracks around there before but not in that exact location. Size of the hole looks to me pretty much as per the tear straps.

CRW landing
 

I've been into CRW several times with the 737NG. No sweat, no fret, piece-a-cake.

OK I'll bite.

Why would an Airbus have been a bigger problem in this case?:confused:

Yeah, I have to ask too. What would be different if it was an Airbus 318/19/20/21? I'm not mech or engineer so it's a sheer curiosity.

Is it possible that yssy-ymel was thinking of the publicity bandwagon that would have started to roll:- "Yet Another Airbus Disaster/Near Disaster" sort of thing in the world's tabloids (and possibly even here on PPRuNe, perish the thought)?

That's it Ken. It appears every time there is an incident involving an Airbus airframe, there is a hurricane of s:mad:t produced linking each and every Airbus incident with each other.

Ill informed, unprofessional reporting by the media, and some pretty silly discussions on here don't help much either.

Wouldn't such comment be not fact based? Where is the skin on Airbus implicated in failure? Fatigue is associated with metals, yes? At least in this case, AB would get a pass, especially here ??

Will

> Now what would have happened if a pax/hostie had been stood > under the hole a la the Aloha incident.... Well, fair question; would that have plugged this hole, or caused it to get bigger? (I realize we won't know unless they test this somehow ...)