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Southwest appeared eager to shift blame to Boeing. The airline said it had never been alerted to a potential problem where overlapping panels of aluminum skin are riveted together on the 737-300. "This is a Boeing-designed airplane. This is a Boeing-produced airplane," Southwest spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said. "It's obviously concerning to us that we're finding skin-fatigue issues." Boeing officials declined to respond to Rutherford's comments. Many of the planes that fall under the FAA order don't fall under U.S. auspices. FAA has authority only over U.S. operators, but government aviation agencies in most other countries usually follow FAA's safety directives with their own orders. Germany's Lufthansa has a fleet of 63 737s, including 33 of the 300 series, but just three are from the same series as the Southwest jet. The problem of what is known as "widespread fatigue damage" in aging planes has a long, well-documented history. It became a major safety focus of the FAA and was the subject of congressional hearings after the Aloha Airlines 737-200 accident in April 1988. There were 95 people on board. A flight attendant and seven passengers were seriously injured.
Following the accident, the FAA instituted a new safety regime for older 737s for cracking that includes not only visual inspections, but the use of devices that employ electromagnetic currents to spot fatigue and corrosion. The agency also began work in 2004 on a rule that would require more detailed inspections and maintenance procedures for other types of aging aircraft, not just the 737. Initially there was opposition from airlines to the new procedures because of the cost involved. After over six years of work, FAA published a rule requiring the new procedures late last year. It went into effect in January. It gives manufacturers 18 months to five years, depending upon the plane involved, to develop inspection programs. Airlines and other operators then have another two and a half to six years to implement the inspection requirements. Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said an FAA safety order to be issued Tuesday is an acknowledgement that previous inspection procedures were inadequate. "There is no question this was a very serious safety event," Voss said. That the skin peeled away shouldn't come as a surprise, said Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aeronautical engineering at St. Louis University. Czysz said fuselages are designed with a specific stress limit, based on the number of cycles a plane flies. When a fatigue crack emerges, he said, that means the limit is being pushed. The trick is to keep up a rigorous inspection program. "It's not magic," he said. "It's just basic physics."
[Associated
Press;
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