Federal safety officials are investigating how a foot-long hole opened in the top of a Southwest Airlines jet, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W. Va.
An investigator looks at a hole on top of a Southwest Airlines plane which had to make an emergency...
An investigator looks at a hole on top of a Southwest Airlines plane which had to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W.V., Monday, July 13, 2009. Southwest Airlines ordered inspections of nearly 200 aircraft after a football-sized hole opened up in the passenger cabin of a plane during flight, forcing an emergency landing in West Virginia. Travelers on the 737 aircraft could see outside through the 1-foot-by-1-foot hole that appeared during the flight Monday. The cabin lost pressure, but no one was injured on the Nashville to Baltimore flight with 126 passengers and five crew members on board. (AP Photo/The Charleston Gazette, Chris Dorst)
(AP)
The Boeing 737 jet lost pressure in the cabin, but no one was injured on Monday's Nashville-to-Baltimore flight that carried 126 passengers and five crew members.
The plane was built in 1994, and government records indicated that an inspection in January turned up eight cracks in the frame that required repairs.
Southwest said Tuesday that it inspected all 181 of its identical Boeing 737-300-series jets overnight before putting them back in the sky.
Passenger Michael Cunningham told NBC's "Today" show Tuesday that he had dozed off in his seat in mid-cabin when he was awakened by "the loudest roar I'd ever heard," and saw the hole above his seat.
Cunningham said people stayed calm and put on oxygen masks that dropped from the ceiling.
"After we landed in Charleston, the pilot came out and looked up through the hole, and everybody applauded, shook his hand, a couple of people gave him hugs," he said.
Passengers in the front rows didn't know the full extent of the hole — that it went right through to the sky, said Charles Overby, CEO of the Freedom Forum, a free-press foundation that runs the Newseum in Washington.
"I was just as happy not to know that," he told The Associated Press. "It was pretty harrowing, but I've been through worse landings during turbulence."
Southwest said it was unclear what caused the hole, which ripped open just in front of the vertical tail fin as the plane cruised at 30,000 feet. The jet flew on for nearly half an hour to Charleston.
Federal Aviation Administration records show that during the plane's 14-year checkup in January, eight cracks were found in the fuselage frame and repaired.
Damage from wear and tear is not unusual in planes of that age, and the FAA requires special inspections for cracks. In March, Southwest agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed those required inspections.
