Southwest FLT 812 Decompression and diversion
 

KCRA 3 Insider

YUMA, Ariz. -- A Southwest flight headed to Sacramento from Phoenix had to be diverted to Yuma, Ariz. on Friday because of rapid decompression caused by a hole in the plane. Sacramento International officials said that Flight 812, a Boeing 737, had 118 passengers aboard and landed safely at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station/International Airport at 4:07 p.m. The airport is a dual-use facility. The plane descended 16,000 feet in a minute, according to the flight-tracking website called flightaware.com.

One passenger said they heard an explosion during the flight and could see daylight coming through a hole in the plane. The KCRA viewer sent in a photo that also shows oxygen masks dropping inside the aircraft.

"The hole is about 6 feet, oxygen masks are down," passenger Brenda Reese told KCRA 3. Reese said she was asleep when the rapid descent took place but heard a jarring noise.

A separate picture sent to KCRA 3 shows the hole above a luggage compartment.

The FAA said they have not confirmed what caused the decompression.

Sacramento airline officials said they have been told that all passengers are safe, and Marine medical personnel went aboard the plane to check on the passengers once they landed in Yuma.

Flight 812 was scheduled to arrive at 5:30 p.m. in Sacramento and is now set to arrive at 8:45 p.m. An FAA inspector is headed from Phoenix to Yuma to conduct an investigation. In July 2009, a Southwest Boeing 737 going from Nashville to Baltimore was forced to make an emergency landing in West Virginia after a foot-long hole opened in the top of the plane. Federal investigators later said that metal fatigue caused the hole to rip open in the roof of the plane. Nobody was injured in that case.

Former United Airlines pilot Jerry Blalock said pilots are trained in rapid decompression cases, and that it appears the pilot of Flight 812 landed the plane in textbook fashion. Reese said passengers started clapping for the pilot when the plane landed.

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Hope the crew is enjoying a well-deserved beer for a great effort.
The reporting wasn't all that bad either.

I did a quick search and a pic I found showed a hole of several square ft.

If confirmed, that is a big hole and I would expect some luggage to have been ejected

Having flown a 737 800 for 3 years now, I'm not sure I believe it could do 16,000 feet per min in an emergency decent. Recon you'd have to drop the gear to even obtain half that!

I caught some pics on another site and from the inside it appears that the hole/tear is at least 4 ft long. The previous fuselage problems have been holes about 8" x 12". We will have to wait on this one to see if there was a large failure from the start or airflow over the fuselage increased the size of the hole.

Registration N632SW, 737-300, 15 yrs old, probably a lot of cycles.

drop
 

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011...verted.html?hp

"It dropped pretty quick" this report indicates 6 ft hole

As reported on another forum, N632SW currently at 39,768 cycles and 48,722 hours.

Three questions from a dumb guy:
1. did something like this happen outside US also in the past?
2. did something like this happen with an Airbus already?
3. if I had to pay $7.5 million two years back: wouldn't I take care of such inspections or is it like: "Uhm, it happened once and the lightning will not strike the same place again?"

On Southwest routes, that's pretty much a certainty.

sprocky, you are not dumb.
Your questions however, are dumb.
1) Do your research.
2) Don't try starting an Airbus vs Boeing argument. Once again, do your research
3) This one is just dumb. Reasearch once again.

BrissySparkyCoit
 

1. I could not find any evidence for this happening outside US. I remember the famous happening with Aloha 1988. There were several accidents following decompression but they were attributed to other causes (cargo door failures: DC-10; design failure: Comet).

2. Did not want to start a fight Airbus vs. Boeing. Just wanted to know if this has happened to an Airbus before. I could not find evidence for this. Sure, Airbus is a much younger company with less sales in total. But in about 30 years there should be some aircraft 15 years old with about the same amount of cycles. Or do airlines trash Airbus aircraft after 10 years. I doubt that.

3. Please explain your statement. If this is something serious I'd definetely have a look at this. Or is it all about saving money? Squeeze the valets of pax as much as you can but don't care about their lives?

I am no expert. I only want to understand a bit more. The only major knowledge in aviation is related to the PA200 I was working on for 3.5 years. At that time there was still something installed called the "fatique counter". If there was anything suspicious the a/c was taken out of service for further investigation. Also the a/c fuselage, wings and tailerons were inspected after a certain amount of cycles. During those inspections the a/c was almost taken apart completely. I remember having seen a show on TV that this is also done on civil aircraft.

As SLF, I find these numbers to be enlightening.

First, for a 15 year old plane, it is running 2,651 cycles per year, 7.26 cycles per day. That means this plane must have, on average, started out at 6 AM in the morning and hit the terminal at last flight at 9 or 10 PM at the earliest.

Second, the plane is building hours at 1.23 hrs per cycle. This suggests an awful lot of puddle jumps from Austin to Houston, to Dallas, and back again.

Seems like this plane has absolutely been beat to death, and makes me ask the question if there is some kind of "multiplier" to take into account cycles in gauging aging and airworthiness?

The hours and landings and age are about half the life of a 737.

Some people shows signs of old age at 45, I guess the same applies to planes... Early retirement....

Wow, pax must have gotten a big fright, along with the crew. Here is a picture from inside

BBC News - Holed Southwest Airlines flight makes emergency landing

Regarding descent rate, from the NYT article linked above:

Eboy, that sounds much more realistic. That's about 6k feet a minute. The inital 16k in a minute sounds impossible. Don't even think you'd get that if you were shot down :ok:

Another chem mill problem or something else I wonder?

Interesting as Southwest may be considered as the Low Cost model pioneer. The financials look great but past and recent history of maintenance compliance isn't great... Wonder if the European LoCos have taken on this part of the model...? what you pay is what you get...

Was there not a thread about a report on inspectors/subcontractors and stuff that didn't fit on &£&-* assembly a wee while back......<whistling>