This month, the roof of a Southwest flight ripped off. Terrifying. The culprit? Possibly metal fatigue – the gradual weakening of a plane’s structure as it flies and ages. It’s a known problem – so why doesn’t the FAA hunt it harder?
As the NYT reports, the FAA only adds a problem to its safety inspection checklists once it’s a known problem with a given plane. That is to say, once the damage has already (literally) been done. This, as opposed to checking for unprecedented problems before they pop up and potentially suck people out over the Atlantic Ocean. How might this be done? Former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia says giving old, beat-up planes a diligent checkup would show inspectors what to look for in younger planes. Makes sense to us. [NYT]
Wesley Chiu
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 9:51 AMMany old planes are examined towards their end of life or even afterwards to try and determine areas of higher stress and vulnerabilities in the aircraft structure. Unfortunately, many planes have not reached their end of life before these issues come up and these failures occur at an earlier stage than anticipated and so this makes it more unlikely that the cracks are found.
So why not inspect all aircraft thoroughly for cracks at more regular intervals? One major reason is cost: in order to find all of the cracks and weaknesses, you will have to dismantle the aircraft and examine all the parts – this costs way too much. Also, cracks and weaknesses may be created by the actual inspection process.
These are just a couple of reasons why finding these tiny cracks is so hard. If you could find a way to find all the tiniest cracks in the aircraft structure (not just the skins) then you would be a very rich person.