A Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Sacramento made an emergency landing yesterday after the roof of the passenger cabin ripped open several feet. The pilots were able to descend and land with only minor injuries to the cabin and crew, so good on them. I'm betting that taking a 737 from 36,000 feet to 10,000 feet in a few seconds is a roller coaster no-one wants to ride.
Southwest has had some maintenance issues in the past couple of years, so I hope this incident is investigated thoroughly and all of the aircraft in their fleet get a thorough going over.
Southwest likes to mix up their safety speech a bit, and the part that occurs to me is where they talk about a cabin pressure problem: "If the person next to you is a child, or is acting like a child". Count me as one of the people who would probably be acting like a child. Events like this may give some passengers a reason to pay attention to the flight attendant other than her nice legs in those blue shorts.
3 comments:
That is an interesting one... Much like the Aloha incident (but not nearly as catastrophic).
Luckily, this time the damage appears to be only a linear tear in the roof, and wasn't big enough to pull anyone out of the plane.
The issue here, just like Aloha, is the constant cycles on the airframe... multiple takeoff, climb, descent, landings in a single day DO wear on airframes much worse than longer leg trips. Also it's now coming out that this airplane has suffered cracks in the last year...
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