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>

It's what they are designed to do
 

An airliner is designed to fly, not be parked up. Being a shorthaul aircraft, this one has "only" managed to stay airborne for just under nine hours per day where as some long haul aircraft manage 16 hours per day, every day. This aircraft, like all others, has some components which are "lifed" by cycles, some which are "lifed" by hours and others which are calendar dependent and finally some that have no finite life as long as they meet certain inspection criteria. So there is already a very good "multiplier" in effect. From what I understand about Southwest, it will remain in service as long as it firstly serviceable and secondly it is economic to keep it there. They will be as keen as everyone else to find out what actually happened, just so they can stop it reoccurring. Unfortunately, I can also feel the legal scum looking information just so they can screw someone over.

PM

Couple of new pics here

Large hole discovered after Southwest flight makes emergency landing - CNN.com

Tweets and twitpics from PAX

Twitter
@BluestMuse

SW claims to always make a profit every year.

We all know in the airline business this is an impossibility.
Something has to slide and it's usually maintenance.

First, someone tries to make it an Airbus v Boeing slanging match, now you try an anti-Irish, anti Ryanair rant. Par for the course.

IAA are subject to EASA rules, as are ALL EU CAAs. All EU registered airlines can operate anywhere within the EU without restriction - look at it as a Texan carrier being able to operate in New Jersey.

FR operate a robust maintenance regime - even arch cost cutter M O'L is on record many times as being very maintenance aware (read Siobhan Creatons book for references). FR do not operate old aircraft - they are moved on after no more than 10 years, as current disposals indicate. Certainly no second hand aircraft such as those SW use, and al to a standard spec at present.

MD

N632SW was delivered new to Southwest on 13 June 1996.

AIRFRAMES.ORG - Aircraft Database - N632SW

.

Same story from you the ppune "expert pontificators"....it must be short cuts on the MX side...they must be hiding something. Y'all are full of SHIITE, these aircraft as are other models are on an expanded inspection schedule that is a product of BOEING and the regulators, fact is this happens to other airlines and aircraft as well. And who on this planet believes with the previous and current scrutiny on the aviaiton industry that SWA would attempt to hide anything relating to MX.

6 foot hole really??????Says who the investigators??? or Brenda Reese and the MEDIA machine. Glad Ms Reese and the 118 pax and 5 crew are safe thanks to the professional flight and cabin crew at Southwest Airlines.

Of course while Reese is making her rounds on the talking head programs this morning I have not heard her once utter a word of praise for the crew, just sensationalist BS like I 'll have to think more carefully about getting on a plane...fine good luck on the roads.

Do us all a favor, put a muzzle on it, let the investigation move forward and in the meantime SWA has taken the step of a precautionary safety standown of 81 aircraft that are on a similar inspection program to the event aircraft (notice I did not use incident or accident because the NTSB has not made that determination yet) in order to determine if further inspections beyond that currently required by AD are required..that to me does not sound like hiding something...

THAT SOUNDS LIKE PROACTIVE AIRLINE SAFETY...

You are probably thinking of the Aloha accident. That was also a Boeing 737.

Could that be a bit of attack being the first line of defence McDaddy?

So skin problems, including aircraft that already have been reskinned once already, aren't the subject of conjecture and discussion in house, with the Feds and up in Seattle for a significant amount of time before this incident?

Is it possible that those in the know have been bracing themselves for an aging aircraft program to be developed and invoked for months now?

Lemme see... Failure in the structure requiring major repair. I think you can stop worrying, it will be accident.

Sprocky_

I don't know why some of the guys here can't be polite enough to just answer a simple question. There was a decompression incident in July of 2009 where a "football sized" hole opened in the top of the fuselage of a Southwest 737; that was inside the U.S.

Southwest inspects planes after emergency landing - USATODAY.com

The $7.5 million fine was agreed to in March 2009 as a settlement for violations which occurred in 2008.

Over the years, a single airline seems to suffer increased numbers of inflight failures, fires etc. - Qantas. As per areas, this seems to be the USA, concerning pressurized structures failures. (Even when it happened in Taiwan, it was maintained by TBC in the US.) Once is coincidential, twice is a trend...

CNN is reporting, in interview with aviation "consultant", that SWA gets most of its "heavy maintenance" done in El Salvador.

a) Correct?
b) I though mechanics had to have FAA licenses same as pilots - is there some kind of recognition of non-US licensing that allows mechanics without FAA licenses to do work on aircraft owned and operated in US airspace by US operators?

pattern is full:

CNN is reporting, in interview with aviation "consultant", that SWA gets most of its "heavy maintenance" done in El Salvador.

a) Correct?
b) I though mechanics had to have FAA licenses same as pilots - is there some kind of recognition of non-US licensing that allows mechanics without FAA licenses to do work on aircraft owned and operated in US airspace by US operators?
Fox just interviewed a former NTSB board member. I recall the gentleman was a aircraft mechanic with US Air before he went with the Board.

He stated that SWA's heavy maintenance is done in El Salvador. He had serious questions about oversight. Further, he said FAA inspectors can't just show up at the facility as they do in the U.S. Instead, they have to phone ahead for an appointment.

Smells a tad, doesn't it.

Way too much speculation to known fact ratio here.

Lots of questions need to be answered, but let's try and keep the questions simple rather than connect the dots with a broad paintbrush.

For starters look at how the questions and answers played out in the Aloha incident (accident) and the earlier SWA incident (accident) then let's see what lines up in this incident (accident)

Another lap joint failure?

http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n...632SWyuma3.jpg

Well put, the same aircraft with the same hrs/cycles could have had less hard landings, turbulence etc. HRS/CYCLES do not equal wear and tear.

Pattern Is Full
 

Can not confirm what MRO's SWA is using at this time. I can say though that foreign MRO's are inexpensive and they as domestic MRO's only need a ratio of FAA liscenced to non liscenced labor. Being in a foreign land there is much doubt that the FAA gives said MRO the attention they need to ensure their compliance.

Having worked in domestic MRO's I dislike them greatly as profit is a evil motivator. In my opinion, a tech at an airline unionized or not is less likely to rush a job, cut a corner (just do what their supervisor said for fear of losing their job).

There is just not enough resolution in your picture to tell. This is the first exterior shot I have seen. I know that the aircraft in question has been painted within the last year or so.
I remember some years back when a repainter was leaving scribe marks from sharp tools at lap joints from the paint removal process causing localized stress and failure.
I suspect that since SWA has grounded the 737-300 aircraft for inspections that they have a clue as to exactly what they are looking for. They just forgot to inform PPRuNe.

AD-2010-25-06 and SWA 812
 

I took a quick look at B737-300 ADs involving fuselage frame and skin crack inspections. AD-2010-25-06 requires inspection of frames at STA 616 and 639 which, I believe, is on either side of row 12 in a 737-300. This is where the decompression occurred leading me to wonder if this aircraft had been inspected under this AD. The AD as issued allows the operator 4500 hours to perform the inspection. That's about a year and a half (using my fingers and toes) and the AD was issued 9 months ago. So, my guess is that SWA was operating the aircraft within the range of hours permitted by the FAA for the inspection and repair to be performed when this incident occurred. Go read the AD yourself here.

Some guys were so kind to have a serious look into my questions. Thanks.

DX Wombat
Maybe my question was a bit misleading and I hope to make it more clear with this one: Did something like this happened to any other carrier not running under the flag of the USA?

thcrozier
Does that mean the fine was not related to the decompression accident in 2009?

MidlandDeltic
There was no intention to start a Airbus vs. Boeing match. I only wanted to know if decompression happened to an Airbus already. You can also take Tupolev, Antonov, Embraer, Bombardier, etc. I picked Airbus because they are well-known and some of their aircraft might have the same duty as this B737 has.