Word: aloha
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...theory, a Boeing 737 with roughly one-third of its roof blown off should not be able to fly. As Aloha 243 abruptly lost altitude, passengers began singing hymns and bracing for a crash. "I was quite sure we weren't going to make it," said Becklin, a University of Hawaii astronomer, who told of ducking his head to avoid the debris streaming from the remnants of the fuselage. "The plane was disintegrating so pieces were falling off it, molding was coming down, and the wind was catching it. The hole up front got bigger and bigger, and I knew...
...bruises and cuts from the debris and the rippling winds. But there was one fatality: Flight Attendant Clarabelle Lansing, who had flown with the airline for 37 years. Lansing, one of two attendants near the first-class compartment when the roof blew open, was apparently sucked out of the Aloha jet by the escaping...
...737s were built in the late 1960s, endured tens of thousands of pressurization cycles, and operated in the highly corrosive atmosphere of the warm salt air over the Pacific Ocean. "The only difference this time is that . the fuselage floor held," Miller said. "But the fuselage skin on the Aloha flight started its peel-back almost exactly where it did on the Far Eastern ship -- just aft of the cockpit bulkhead...
Pressurizing an aircraft for high-altitude flight and then depressurizing it for a landing is analogous to inflating and deflating a balloon. Eventually, the fuselage of the plane, like the surface of the balloon, is apt to give way. The Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 was what aviation professionals call a "high-time" aircraft -- one nearing the end of its operational life -- and had undergone far more pressurization cycles than Far Eastern...
Last October the Government ordered a close inspection of the upper-fuselage skin on all vintage Boeing 737s because the metal had begun to crack on several of these aircraft. Although such a connection is speculative at the moment, Aloha Airlines has temporarily grounded its other three high-time 737s...