Southwest 737 lands at Yeager Airport after hole in fuselage
 

Monday July 13, 2009
Southwest 737 lands at Yeager Airport after hole in fuselage
by The Associated Press




CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Southwest Airlines 737 aircraft made a emergency landing in Charleston after the passenger cabin became depressurized after a hole appeared in the fuselage.


Central West Virginia Regional Airport Authority spokesman Brian Belcher says Flight 2294 was diverted to Yeager Airport and landed shortly after 6:30 p.m. Monday. There were 126 passengers and five crew members on board.


Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said the football-sized hole was located mid-cabin, near the top of the aircraft. McInnis said a replacement plane was to take the passengers to Baltimore.


Belcher says the plane, which left Nashville about 4:15 p.m. CDT and was headed to Baltimore, landed without incident. No one was injured.


The National Transportation Safety Board is trying to determine what might have caused the damage, McInnis said.

Here's the divert from FlightAware:

FlightAware > Live Flight Tracker > Southwest Airlines Co. #2294 > 13-Jul-2009 > KBNA-KBWI

Looks like they were almost to FL 350 when they did the high dive.

The story so far:

Southwest Airlines B737 with hole in fuselage lands safely at Charleston, WV - AircrewBuzz.com

Photo (posted via Twitter): Twitpic - Share photos on Twitter

(Yikes! :eek:)

If it has Arinc 700 ADF, that's about where the loop/sense antenna would be. There would be a hole about 3" diameter for that, IIRC.

GB

recall the FAA's fines against Southwest for cracks?

while we don't have enough details, from my experience , this airport is a tough one.

to chose it for an emergency landing means things were bad and THEY needed to get down somewhere pronto.

>>>to chose it for an emergency landing means things were bad and THEY needed to get down somewhere pronto

Or, it could just as easily mean that CRW just happened to be the nearest suitable airport as of the time the event occured. The Flightaware track would tend to support that...

charley west is a tough airport...if things were ok...they could have gone for another half hour and had some great airports

its ok, I've flown there for 10 years...but if something was wrong with my plane, I would go elsewhere...UNLESS....

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES INFORMATION REGARDING FLIGHT 2294

Scheduled Nashville-Baltimore Flight Diverts to West Virginia

DALLAS, TX—July 13, 2009—Southwest Airlines confirms Flight 2294, the 4:05 pm Eastern scheduled departure from Nashville to Baltimore/Washington diverted to Yeager Airport in Charleston, W. Va at approximately 5:10 pm Eastern today after a cabin depressurization. All 126 passengers and crew of five onboard landed safely and are awaiting a replacement aircraft in Charleston that will take them to Baltimore/Washington International Airport later this evening.

The aircraft cabin depressurized approximately 30 minutes into the flight, activating the passengers’ onboard oxygen masks throughout the cabin. Medical personnel in Charleston assessed passengers and no injuries are reported. Southwest Airlines is sending its maintenance personnel to Charleston to assess the aircraft, and the airline will work with the NTSB to determine the cause of the depressurization. According to initial crew reports, the depressurization appears to be related to a small-sized hole located approximately mid-cabin, near the top of the aircraft.

There is no responsible way to speculate as to a cause at this point. We have safety procedures in place, and they were followed in this instance to get all passengers and crew safely on the ground. Reports we have are that our passengers were calm and that our Pilots and Flight Attendants did a great job getting the aircraft on the ground safely.

In an abundance of caution, we have initiatied an inspection of all 737-300s tonight. We expect only minimal impact to tomorrow's schedule until all of those inspections are complete.

Oh come on Hornet, maybe the flight crew were ex-Navy, and thought, worse case, the crash barrier would keep them on the hilltop. Or maybe they were ex-Colgan based in CRW, and not only could they do the approach in their sleep, they probably already had. :P

State capital has some decent medical facilities that are only a winding drive up the mountain away -- I think they're even on the same part of town. The ANG is based in CRW, which should help disaster relief anyway.

But for a less severe incident, you're probably right. The airport bar is not very impressive, and there are no good restaurants in town. On the bright side, it sounds like they can get a stack of pizzas on-site with minimal delay. I suspect there are very few other places in the world where you'll see such flexibility and heroism from the region's catering assets.

CRW is an interesting landing strip. Fifty years ago my father had a forced landing there - water in the avgas. The engine quit on short final - 30 seconds sooner and he'd been into the hillside.

Oh, and there are some reasonable restaurants there, but not for 126 pax plus crew. :}

Not knowing anything about the airport - why is it regarded as tough?

(Just curious)

After viewing the photo,s it appears that the hole has regular edges as if it is a panel that has partially detached! As I do not know the aircraft type I could be totally wrong! :hmm:

There are 4 airports north, south, east and west of CRW ranging from 64nm to as little as 42nm from CRW each of which have an ILS and longer runways than CRW. However, as most of us know, each airline has a list of airports that it considers acceptable alternates (or first choice alternates) and more than anything else has to do with that airline having it's own ops office there so they can handle their own passengers and not have to rely on another airline to do it. This is probably even more so with SWA because they don't have agreements with other airlines, or at least not as many as most of the majors do. Kudos to the crew members for doing a great job of putting her on the ground safely with no injuries.:ok:

Sorry, that ain't a small hole.

No antenna in that location:
JetPhotos.Net Photo » N387SW (CN: 26602) Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-3H4 by Jason Whitebird

Agreed,it would be an odd place for a panel but what about a poor quality skin repair?
Does anyone else think the hole edges look too uniform to be true?

Video with passenger account, outer views of aircraft: Jet makes landing with football-sized hole - CNN.com

The BBC now have a report at BBC NEWS | Americas | Hole in US plane forces landing with a picture of someone looking at the aircraft from the outside that shows nicely where it is (just in front of the vertical stabiliser).

They missed the obvious headline though: "Hole appears in aeroplane; investigators are looking into it".

ETA: it seems to be remarkably square. I bet it ruptured and then tore along the approved lines as Boeing intended with their design.

If I remember correctly, the engineering for the airframe has some built in safeguards - if there is hole punched in (or out of) the airframe, a panel around this size is the maximum that should detach. What happened here is the exact opposite of what occurred in the Aloha Airlines flight (243 if I remember correctly). If that's the case, the airframe responded correctly to the failure, and (albeit there were no fatigue cracks in this airframe) half the cabin didn't peel away. A good outcome none the less.

Then again SWA was spanked by the FAA last Fall for deferring non deferable skin inspects. ".......who ya gonna call...."

Will

Not their week - They just had an APU fire indication and evacuated on the Runway at Orlando (via stairs)

Flight Makes Emergency Landing At OIA - Orlando News Story - WKMG Orlando

PS. Edited to say that this incident warranted 3 news helicopters over the field for the last hour - clearly a slow news day.