I’m friends with other crew of other airline but hadn’t the chance to meet her, yet. A lot of it is a nod or a little wave but that’s about it since we’re all hustling to the next departure gate.
Good job to this pilot during the stress of the incident. After just watching the NTSB’s latest briefing the questions to be answered become obvious. Is the noted metal fatigue a problem in manufacturing or in maintenance? An inspection of the aircraft was done 2 days prior to this incident.. what was inspected? When was the last detailed engine inspection and was it done according to current aviation standards for the engine model?
If you watch the news and read closely between the lines, Southwest is already hinting that they didn’t perform the enhanced inspections suggested after their last engine incident because it wasn’t “exactly” the same engine model. It sounds to me like a pretty legalistic response. My hunch will be that a lack of careful maintenance on Southwest’s part led them to miss the signs of metal fatigue on this engine. The question is how many other engines have metal fatigue where the fan blades attach to the hub? and how many other airlines are looking carefully for them? I suspect NTSB will issue a service bulletin at some point during the investigation for airlines to ultrasonically inspect all 737 engines... quite a task given how many of them there are.
She probably won’t have to pay at any bar for anything for the rest of the year.