Posted on 12/29/2005 10:35:01 PM PST by paulat
Alaska jet repaired after accident
06:47 PM PST on Thursday, December 29, 2005 By GLENN FARLEY / KING 5 News
SEATAC, Wash. - A gash in an Alaska Airlines jet caused by a baggage handler has been fixed, according to the airline, but experts Thursday offered some perspective on the forces that came to bear on the plane when the hole popped open at 26,000 feet.
No one was injured in the incident, which included cabin depressurization and a rapid descent to 10,000 feet so passengers could breathe.
The plane is not yet back in service as the airline continues to check the craft for damage, Alaska spokesperson said.
The hole in the side of the MD-80 is a jagged rectangle about six inches high and a foot long.
The KING 5 Investigators on Wednesday night received from an anonymous source pictures of a hole in the site of an Alaska jet that appear to be authentic.
Aerospace engineer Todd Curtis, who produces the air safety Web site Airsafe.com took a look at the images showing the shredded skin of the plane.
The hole in the Alaska jet measured 6 inches by 12 inches.
“Some of this could be due to the dynamic forces of the air going past whatever exposed metal was out there and peeling it back like a sardine can,” he said.
The images show scrape marks apparently caused by the baggage loader that hit the plane and bundles of wire and a control cable visible where the aluminum has been ripped away.
“This is so large, it should have been easily seen by anyone casually looking in this direction,” Curtis said.
The good news is that the airplane's design to limit the size of a hole in fuselage skin worked.
“There are procedures that are designed to keep the situation from getting worse. So the pilots get lower to get to breathable air, and the pilots aren't going to be doing any radical maneuvers,” he said.
New accounts from passengers now indicate they experienced everything from the sound of an explosion to a loud whoosh along with ringing and pain in their ears.
By all accounts, the pilots and flight crew performing text book job of getting the plane down, and helping passengers get their oxygen masks on.
Aircraft skin is thin and when subject to enough stress, previous damage or fatigue can break, sometimes with catastrophic results.
Depressurization can be extremely dangerous. Explosive depressurization ripped part of the roof off a 737 above Maui, Hawaii in 1988, killing a flight attendant.
A year later, also in Hawaii, the cargo door of a 747 during ascent, killing nine people, who were pulled out of the plane.
Alaska Thursday told KING 5 news that new training sessions will include giving baggage handlers a hand's on look at just how thin Aircraft aluminum is.
In a separate incident Alaska Airlines Thursday said the right wing of a Boeing 737 touched the runway during a rough landing at the Sitka, Alaska airport earlier this month.
The damage was confined to scrapes and a broken light and there were no injuries.
Thanks for the pics. I was wondering how bad it looked.
I will never forget that. I'm going to get flamed for this, but here goes. My daughter, born in 1991, drew pictures of this (when she was 4) even though it happened before she was born. Her pictures were of rainbows with "angels hands" reaching down "to the people who flew out of the plane, to catch them".
Since the aircraft did initially pressurize the hole could not have been there to begin with. There must have been a dent or much smaller hole which the pressurization system could keep up with, and passing 26K the weakened section popped.
Has your daughter ever done anything similar to this since?
Uh... that piece of equipment, whatever it was... hit that plane pretty hard. That right-hand side piece is bent inward quite a ways, and it wouldn't have been by the blowout. This wasn't just a "crease" in the skin like the guy said.
ping - follow up from a few days ago
...But I suppose it might have been bent inward by air rushing by in flight.
But I still wonder if this was really just a "crease". Not buying it.
You gotta remember, though, that the plane was flying at altitude as it ripped open.
Back on the ground...the pics could have been affected by something as simple as breezes...we've had 40 MPH+ at times here in the Puget Sound area in the past couple of days.
If you take a pic with winds blowing...it could very well push those "flaps" inward.
ping
No, that stopped around age 5 or so as far as the drawings. She used to talk to me about seeing angels until age 7 or 8 (and asking when she would meet God, kind of scary, but I never let it show), but a lot of that stopped as she got older. She is now a teenager - consumed with all that goes along with being one.
My youngest however, did a watercolor drawing this fall that I kept. Another angel with feathered wings and all. :)
Yes... that could be.
Quite a hole, at any rate.
I saw a hole just like that once where I used to work. Dude driving a forklift was watching a girl who had sat down on a million bucks in the gene pool walk down a hall and ran one of the forks through the base of a steel I-beam roof support.
He also wore out the side of his head on the steering wheel, warped the fork carriage and got a good talking to by his supervisor (also female).
Of course, at the time I was the maintenance supervisor at the time, and all the crap rolled downhill to me and the HR manager.
ping!
I believe you. My son, when he first learned to talk and for about three years thereafter (gradually declining) would often speak as if he had actually been in heaven.
At that time, we didn't attend church (unchurched for 40 years), and we're not superstitious--we're Protestant, and find Catholics to be wholly superstitious. (No flames, please, we all know it's the truth.) ;) Point is...where was he gettin' it all from?
It was as if he had a slowly dying memory of a better place even before he entered the world.
Now...I ain't sayin' nothin', 'cept he wasn't getting it from anyone we know. We asked him in surreptitious parent/child fashion many times, and we flat-out asked our relatives. No one fessed up.
I would be interested in hearing if any other parents out there have had similar experiences with their children.
As for me, I dimly recall a certain "feeling" or "attitude" toward God when I was very young, around 4th grade or earlier. Memories of motherly love, Freud might say. But I feel it was something more.
Sauron
"we're Protestant, and find Catholics to be wholly superstitious. (No flames, please, we all know it's the truth.) ;)"
lmao! You should have said that on the "President of Bishops condemns SouthPark" thread last night.......
It was flying fast and furious about religion and Catholic especially.
I like FR!
bonk
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.