Posted on 07/26/2008 1:30:02 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Ya think?
I’d be really pissed if I was on that plane and they lost my luggage. Also, nothing is perfect, stuff breaks.
fyi
Finally, an expert not being an alarmist...:^)
I normally chuckle at aviation experts due to my background, but someone got it right...I guess even blind squirrels can find the occasional nut...
What about the large piece of skin that is in the middle of the ocean. Any chance that has the corrosion evidence?
I hope the pilot makes an announcement that it is a controlled descent into thicker air or something to that effect before all the passengers wet themselves.
Not that I would, of course...
Exactly.
It’s the pilot’s job to get the aircraft to a breathable atmosphere in a depressurized state. Thus, about 9000’ ASL — the 20,000’ “plunge”.
I guess the well-informed and curious reporter would have preferred the passengers endure a normal descent ... and the hypoxia and cold air.
One reason the ‘experts’ might be able to rule out corrosion so quickly is that the part in question just might be fibreglass. I’ve yet to see fibreglass “corrode” on an aircraft even those used on over-water routes. Crack and fail yes. But NOT corrode. (harrumph)
The writer of this article is to me a sensationalist and definitely NOT an aircraft ‘expert’. To have relied on plane spotter forums for reports of corrosion is laughable.
When sane minds prevail, I bet the discussion will record that the flight did escape real danger by not ingesting said loose part into the right inboard engine.
I personally doubt the plane suffered ANY loss of structural integrity— it lost part of its skin, not skeleton.
No, when you get a failure, it “grows” from the failure point along the lines of most stress and highest weakness. IF corrosion was the problem, there would be fairly obvious signs of it, as well as relatively simple clues to where the structural failure began. . .
Was this an event that happened in the luggage compartment?
What I am eager to learn is how Global Warming caused this serious malfunction.
Had this been a US carrier the lawsuits for emotional distress would have already been filed.
They don’t even want to consider the “T” word , do they?
Guess so.
It was a plane fart, that’s all.
A plane I was on late last night got smacked hard by someone on the ground crew driving the loading ramp into it. I was getting off the plane, but if I had been flying on that aircraft this morning, I would hope it had been inspected thoroughly. Small cracks can lead to whole panels departing the aircraft prematurely.
I am not familiar with that particular airframe. But with a 17 year commercial a/c it could have some fatigue in that area of the skin, where the rivets join to the spars. Also in that area of the a/c skin there is some hardened stress points, that might not have been closely observed thru the use of n.d.i. inspection equipment. One way to make sure is to closely inspect same model and year, of same type a/c and look with n.d.i. non destructive inspection equipment, like x ray, or using i.r. infra red photography. You would think thru a Class C or D phased inspection, they would have located any type of stress cracks if in the past, that was a known area for stress fractures.
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