Southwest Airlines Grounds B737 Fleet

[mamurray 0]

What will be interesting to find out is if this is another failure of chemically etched skin/doubler; as was the case in the previous Southwest incident. The crown panels of the B737 are surprisingly thin, seem to remember ~-.030". I believe American Airlines also had a similar incident on a B757. Will be interesting to find out the outcome.

[tnorton776 0]

What will be interesting to find out is if this is another failure of chemically etched skin/doubler; as was the case in the previous Southwest incident. The crown panels of the B737 are surprisingly thin, seem to remember ~-.030". I believe American Airlines also had a similar incident on a B757. Will be interesting to find out the outcome.

day after day after day after day after day cant crack something .030 thin? thirty thousands? thats REDICULOUSLY thin for most fields of work. lol I know I work on CNC and EDM and we hold tolerances up to .000050"!

[mamurray 0]

day after day after day after day after day cant crack something .030 thin? thirty thousands? thats REDICULOUSLY thin for most fields of work. lol I know I work on CNC and EDM and we hold tolerances up to .000050"!

Yes it is thin, but it is chemically etched from double that thickness to provide a doubler (or anti-tear strap as some might know it). Not dissimilar to milling a pocket into sheet metal, since you are a CNC man. When you walk across the crown of the fuselage you can visible see the panel flexing.

[michal 44]

If this doesnt convince you that landings like this, hour after hour day after day cant impact the stress fatigue or yeild strength stress ratio of a aluminum airplane, then you needa go take a course in metallurgy. So does southwest. before they start killing people.

And perhaps you should take a lesson in abstaining from hyperbole, exaggerations and making things up like with those MD-11 takeoffs. There are better, smoother landings and there are harder landings, every airline, every pilot experienced a fair share of both. You write as if it was policy of Southwest to advise their pilots to perform hard landings. It is a complete nonsense.

[vololiberista 205]

1. A passenger reported the descent from FL360 to 11,000 taking about 4 minutes, which seems much more likely.

An emergency crash dive from FL350 to FL150 takes about 2 minutes usually.vololiberista

[tnorton776 0]

And perhaps you should take a lesson in abstaining from hyperbole, exaggerations and making things up like with those MD-11 takeoffs. There are better, smoother landings and there are harder landings, every airline, every pilot experienced a fair share of both. You write as if it was policy of Southwest to advise their pilots to perform hard landings. It is a complete nonsense.

No, you're wrong. it IS southwest policy to perform this type of landing at ALL airports with runways around 7000 feet or less. Regardless of the MD-11 comments, (which I generated to get attention to the issues the PMDG MD-11 sometimes has with climb rates, which there have been many posts about) I am correct about this. This is the field i Work in, and I know what I'm talking about. Fast turnaround, an extreme amount of cycles + a policy of drop it on the runway = STRESS FATIGUE. Any idiot can figure this out. Just use your brain. The age of the plane makes no difference after the first couple of years. After that its all amount of cycles, and how hard you land the plane over and over. and southwest cycles them faster than a rabbit gets F****** and beats the living daylights out of them when they land.Their entire business model and creed is a direct assault on the structural integrity of their planes! Dont you get it? thats howcome they are so profitable and huge and havnt had the problems financally of other airlines. I seen 3 or 4 southwest planes come and go in the time it took for 1 UNITED flight to arrive and leave! Time is money friend and the short turn around times = more money generated. also = stress fatigue.

[michal 44]

This is the field i Work in

Sure, another field you work in :Party:By the way, just my observation, but your language and general phraseology show traits of a rather immature individual.

[mamurray 0]

No, you're wrong. it IS southwest policy to perform this type of landing at ALL airports with runways around 7000 feet or less. Regardless of the MD-11 comments, (which I generated to get attention to the issues the PMDG MD-11 sometimes has with climb rates, which there have been many posts about) I am correct about this. This is the field i Work in, and I know what I'm talking about. Fast turnaround, an extreme amount of cycles + a policy of drop it on the runway = STRESS FATIGUE. Any idiot can figure this out. Just use your brain. The age of the plane makes no difference after the first couple of years. After that its all amount of cycles, and how hard you land the plane over and over. and southwest cycles them faster than a rabbit gets F****** and beats the living daylights out of them when they land.Their entire business model and creed is a direct assault on the structural integrity of their planes! Dont you get it? thats howcome they are so profitable and huge and havnt had the problems financally of other airlines. I seen 3 or 4 southwest planes come and go in the time it took for 1 UNITED flight to arrive and leave! Time is money friend and the short turn around times = more money generated. also = stress fatigue.

Tom, it does seem that you have somewhat of an agenda with what your are posting. Fundamentally, you are wrong, very wrong. The B737 has a very robust structure, which makes it perfectly suited to the high-cycle operations of Southwest Airlines. There are some very clever people working for aircraft manufacturers and at the airlines themselves. None of the videos have shown what would appear to be the Aircraft Maintainence Manual definition of a hard landing, and these days with aircraft having Flight Data Monitoring equipment you get a very good indication of how hard a landing was. If there was a hard landing, there are procedures in place to ground the aircraft until inspected by a qualified engineer. Coupled with the fact that during an aircrafts life there are many structural inspections that look for cracks, popped rivets, corrosion, etc. What that means, is irregardless of how many hard landings you think an aircraft has had, the aircraft is inspected, repaired and is safe to continue flying.

[Jen 0]

Flew S.West last week on a 37-300 series and talked to one of the S.W. personel who told me that they were going to scrap all their 300 series and order 200 of the 737-700 series. The 300's innerds looked really faded and worn out. Possibly to many cycles....Jen noulet

[Buddy2 0]

Their entire business model and creed is a direct assault on the structural integrity of their planes! Dont you get it?

Ugh. This sounds like something one of the "analysts" on MSNBC would say... Meanwhile, those evil airplane operators are getting richer and richer at the expense of the common man while every one of their planes is falling from the sky! (HEAVY SARCASM).Buddy Morgan

[jbassue 181]

And you're basing this on what knowledge exactly? Are you an aerospace engineer or a metalurgical engineer? I very seriously doubt Boeing and the FAA would allow SWA to adopt an SOP that endangers the structure of the aircraft. You're using a latch on a flimsy plastic overhead bin giving way as evidence that the aluminum structure is unsafe? That's more than a bit of a stretch there. The main gear on the 737 sit under the wing box - how the top of the fuselage would absorb any significant shock from "hard" landings is beyond me. I don't know the exact g-force figures but I do know that all airliners are certified/stressed for landings FAR in excess of what the average passenger would deem a hard landing.

You tell 'em Ryan!

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

Ugh. This sounds like something one of the "analysts" on MSNBC would say... Meanwhile, those evil airplane operators are getting richer and richer at the expense of the common man while every one of their planes is falling from the sky! (HEAVY SARCASM).Buddy Morgan

Well, if it's not design or maintenance issues, or the "fact" that Southwest Airlines DOES have a business model that DOES mandate that they abuse their sh@# and staff, then what was it? Did a funking bird run into at 30,000 ft?And this crap about safety records! Just as much as it was unfortunate other airlines have lost passengers, Southwest has been equally fortunate they haven't. Furthermore, I highly doubt that Southwest's conformance for maintenance record keeping is any better than the rest of the industry ....Hell, it's probably be worse.Am I Southwest hater? No, I just hate the market.

[michal 44]

No, I just hate the market.

That's OK you can hate as much as you want but don't attempt to link market to safety in aviation because we know from past examples that in places where there was no "market" to speak of it didn't do wonders to promotion of aviation or its safety, actually just the opposite was true.

[kevinh 409]

Can't have too many people fainting! Pilot did a great job under tremendous pressure.

In fact, under less pressure than usual due to the decompression. :biggrin:Seriously though, they train for this kind of event every 6 months in the simulator. Let's not overplay things.Kevin

[Efussander 0]

No, you're wrong. it IS southwest policy to perform this type of landing at ALL airports with runways around 7000 feet or less. Regardless of the MD-11 comments, (which I generated to get attention to the issues the PMDG MD-11 sometimes has with climb rates, which there have been many posts about) I am correct about this. This is the field i Work in, and I know what I'm talking about. Fast turnaround, an extreme amount of cycles + a policy of drop it on the runway = STRESS FATIGUE. Any idiot can figure this out. Just use your brain. The age of the plane makes no difference after the first couple of years. After that its all amount of cycles, and how hard you land the plane over and over. and southwest cycles them faster than a rabbit gets F****** and beats the living daylights out of them when they land.Their entire business model and creed is a direct assault on the structural integrity of their planes! Dont you get it? thats howcome they are so profitable and huge and havnt had the problems financally of other airlines. I seen 3 or 4 southwest planes come and go in the time it took for 1 UNITED flight to arrive and leave! Time is money friend and the short turn around times = more money generated. also = stress fatigue.

I have a good friend who is a pilot for SWA. He said that the landing proceedure for a 10000 ft runway and a 6500 ft runway is the same. He denies that they have a slam-down proceedure when there is a shortish runway.