Word: aloha
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...agency was responding to the April 28 accident in which an Aloha Airlines 737 landed miraculously in Maui, Hawaii, after an 18-ft. section of the fuselage tore away, like the canvas roof on a convertible, while the plane was going 330 m.p.h. at 24,000 ft. Though Pilot Robert Schornstheimer made the best of a terrible situation, the incident killed one flight attendant and injured 61 passengers. Many of them were struck by chunks of metal and insulation that kept peeling off the plane during its frightening descent...
...Aloha episode is only the most dramatic of mechanical snafus that have ranged from clogged fuel filters to rusted-through floors to cracked turbine blades. Last month the FAA launched a special inspection of all jets operated by Continental and Eastern airlines in response to recurring accusations that their parent, Texas Air, the largest U.S. airline company, was cutting corners on maintenance because of its financial troubles. Even the reliability of new jets came under assault last month, when two foreign carriers, Japan Air Lines and British Airways, complained strongly about malfunctions on freshly assembled Boeing 747s and 767s...
...plane." The airlines know well the devastating visual impact of a damaged plane. When the fuselage of an Eastern DC-9 cracked in half during a hard landing at Pensacola, Fla., last December, injuring three, airline workers quickly concealed the carrier's name with a tarpaulin. Similarly, Aloha employees hurriedly covered their company's logo on the damaged 737 by swabbing orange paint on the tail...
...Aloha incident could obviously have been a far worse tragedy than it was. Inspecting the plane last week, the pilots and investigators marveled at the relatively small strip of cargo tube that held the plane together. In 1981 a 737 flown by Far Eastern Air Transport was not so lucky. It tore completely apart over Taiwan, dooming all 110 aboard. In both accidents, the plane's skin fractured on the top side just behind the cockpit...
Though the precise cause of the Aloha plane's fuselage failure will take months for federal authorities to determine, it is believed that metal fatigue created the stress cracks in the plane's laminated-aluminum skin. When the cracks ruptured, the air rushing by began to peel back the roof through the so-called rip stops, the rigid upright supports in the body shell. Investigators surmise that the metal fatigue was hastened by exposure to corrosive salt air and the exceptionally high number of takeoff-and-landing cycles, nearly 90,000, that the 19-year-old island-hopping plane...