It must be whine day on NHPR. We have people whining about flying older jetliners on the Diane Rhams (sp?) show. One lady guest advocated a "sunset law" for airliners, scrap 'em after 5 years in the air.
After that frightening accident on Southwest, where a portion of the cabin roof blew out, some of this is perhaps natural. But unnecessary.
Speaking as an old flight line maintenance type, I can assure you that airplanes last forever. Unless the plane is in perfect shape, the crew won't take off in it. Everything gets replaced or rebuilt upon reaching its service life. Everything about the plane can be removed and replaced. A seventy year old DC-3 is a good as the day it rolled out of the Douglas factory. Probably better.
The Southwest accident was a surprise. Small cracks developed in the fuselage skin, in a place you cannot see on the ground without going up in cherry picker. And hard to see unless you know just where to look and what to look for. And unexpected, so the area had not been carefully inspected in the past. Now that we know where to look, we found a couple of more airplanes needing repair.
The Southwest accident will result in more inspections, and replacement of sheet metal where cracks are found. Boeing will make some changes to the maintenance manual, and the plane will continue flying as before.
3 comments:
Aye, I agree on this one. There's been countless revisions to Boeing's 7X7s since they were introduced and other airplanes.
Every incident is poured over by the best in the industry and they implement solutions.
1) No pilots will fly a plane that hasn't been maintained.
2) No airliner is going to fly a suspect aircraft. How much money did Southwest lose by taking their 737s out of service for inspects?
3) No manufacturer is going to let any defect go unresolved otherwise they'd lose sales.
Unfortunately some incidents result in loss of life - the rudder one sticks out for me since it happened twice. Once in 1991 and 1994 when they discovered an extremely rare problem with a servo that can cause the opposite input to the rudder than the pilot expects.
I'm actually much more comfortable flying on the older aircraft than newer ones. I figure if its been flying for 25 years its likely to keep flying.
USAF flies some of the oldest stuff around, B-52, KC-135, C-130, C-5. I think the Gooney birds (DC-3) have been retired, but you never know. Everyone felt the old birds were still flying 'cause they were good birds.
The military doesn't fly DC-3s anymore, but I've seen a few flying around the Cape over the last two summers.
The Cape Cod Airfield is a dirt/grass airstrip that caters to biplanes, replicas, and other cool planes.
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