Row Of Seats Come Loose In-Flight Causing Emergency

A United Airlines flight declared an emergency and returned to Seattle after takeoff when a row of seats on the Boeing 737 came loose and slid into the row behind it injuring one passenger. Flight 1139 was on the way to San Fransisco when one bolt was loosened during the takeoff, forcing row 3 to come loose from the floor tracks and slide into row 4. A 61 year-old woman was transported to the hospital with a knee injury. FAA spokesman Allen Kinetzer told the Seattle Times that an "airline maintenance crew discovered the loose bolt on the Boeing 737 and fixed it." One bolt? To hold down an entire row of seats? I suppose if you want two bolts on your row you have to pay an additional $25.

(Seattle Times via Today in The Sky)

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Seven Congressmen On Board For In-Flight Emergency

Seven Texas Congressmen were on board a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Washington D.C. when their aircraft lost cabin pressure and was forced to divert to New Orleans. Flight 458 was carrying Congressmen Ted Poe, Nick Lampson, Ron Paul, John Carter, Ciro Rodriguez, Solomon Ortiz and Henry Cuellar along with 111 other passengers when the problem developed on the 737. Representative Lampson praised the efforts of the crew by saying, "Continental Airline’s personnel and staff were exceptional; executing what seemed to me a textbook performance in emergency procedure. I was very impressed." Ironically, the Congressmen were on their way to the Nation's capital to vote on House Bill H.R. 6493, better known as the Aviation Safety Enhancement Act of 2008. Earlier this month Senator and Presidential hopeful Barrack Obama's Midwest Airlines chartered MD-81 had to divert and make an emergency landing in St. Louis due to an in-flight aft emergency exit slide deployment.

(KHOU)

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TNT 737 Lost Gear Thanks to Distracted Crew

Poor airmanship is to blame for an accident that happened during a night time approach which occurred when a TNT Airways Boeing 737-300 lost one of its main landing gear during a balked go-around two years ago. The aircraft was on a actual instrument conditions Cat IIIA approach when air traffic control passed a company message to the crew requesting a diversion to Liverpool. The captain attempted to reply but inadvertently disconnected both autopilots.

The 737 then descended rapidly as the captain tried to re-engage the autopilots and belatedly tried to execute a go-around, but the aircraft struck the ground at 300 feet to the left of the runway centerline.

Even after the right main landing gear was gone, the aircraft became airborne again. To make matters worse, the aircraft's right and left trailing-edge flaps were stuck at 40° and 32° respectively and its messed up gear remained extended. It then diverted to Birmingham for an emergency landing, which is shown on the above video. The accident happened on June 16, 2006 and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch accident report was just released.

Also revealed in the report was that it was the Captain's first Cat IIIA approach in actual instrument conditions since being promoted from first officer four months prior. Further, the first officer did not appear to understand that he could make the go-around call. The first officer made the go-around call as the aircraft struck the ground...nice timing.

Thankfully no one on-board the aircraft was injured.

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Lufthansa lightning strike picture

This is a nice picture of lightning strike damage to a Lufthansa 737 in Sofia, Bulgaria. The aircraft had just taken off from Sofia to Frankfurt on Saturday April 5th when lightning struck the horizontal stabilizer. The flight crew elected to RTB and rightly so. That's a nice little chunk missing there. Engineers are working on getting the 21-year old aircraft airworthy again. Nothing a little 100 mph tape could fix, right?

Photo: BGSpotters.net

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Aloha parks it

This nice picture from Airliners.net was taken Wednesday, the day after Aloha Airlines shutdown their operations. Honolulu International Airport is now littered with their old fleet. Aircraft are parked in every little nook and cranny available at the airport as their fleet of 28 Boeing 737s await their new fate.

Photo: David Sperry

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Continental 737 blows all main tires on landing

Continental 205 from Oke City had a bit of a bumpy landing at Bush Intercontinental Airport today. In fact the 737 blew all 4 of it's main tires and proceeded to have what was likely a hot brake fire on it's right mains. None of the 113 passengers or crew members were injured, in fact they didn't even evac onto Runway 8L after coming to a stop. That meant the passengers got a nice seat to watch the local ARFF guys douse them with foam as seen in the picture below taken by a passenger. Of course there was a little bit of complaining when the passengers had to wait 2 whole hours for their bags to arrive on the carousel. Sorry to inconvenience you after your near-death experience.



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737 Lands Hard, Front-Left Nosewheel First

There is not much to say other than wow, that must have been a hard and very unique landing. As the title indicates, it was a left nosegear wheel first landing, like a fatty riding a small unicycle. Apparently the landing put a little too much pressure on the airframe, and this is the result. Too bad no video has surfaced of said landing. All the we know so far is that this incident occurred on a Air Algerie Boeing 737-800 flight from Paris (Flight #AH1143) when it landed at Setif Ain Arnat (DAAS/GSF) in Algeria.

I'm sure a good A&P could buff this little problem away, don't you think?

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More FAA Inspections With Some Randomization

Federal Aviation Administration inspectors were ordered yesterday (3/18) to review maintenance records at ALL domestic airlines to ensure that carriers have complied with safety orders and other directives. This is an unprecedented move with the same knee jerk reactionary symptoms the United States deals with on daily basis. I would challenge the FAA to stay on top of these things rather than having a country-wide airline records audit to ensure the FAA has not missed anything or that the airlines are trying to pull a fast one.

As you will recall from the news and our Pointniner blog posts, the FAA is under pressure from Congress to tighten oversight stemming from the alleged inspection lapses at Southwest Airlines that led the agency to propose the record fine of $10.2 million on March 6, 2008.

In response, these audits will give the FAA a snapshot of compliance (or non-compliance) with various safety directives issued over the years that require inspections or other maintenance work. At least part of the audit will focus on airlines flying older Boeing 737 models which have been at the center of the controversy over checks for structural cracks caused by metal fatigue. As for the remaining aircraft, FAA inspectors are free to select which directives to review for at each airline. Time to give the airlines the old "random" cavity check.

According to FAA statistics, there are 4,000 airliners of all types flown by domestic passenger airlines, in addition to the 2,800 regional jets flown by regional carriers. Sounds like a great time, don't you wish you were a FAA auditor?

Regulators do not suspect there are inspection oversight problems (not to cause any alarms), but since Southwest got this all started, they are probably better off being safe than sorry.

Southwest gets their peepees slapped for flying uninspected planes

The FAA is alleging that Southwest Airlines knowingly failed to perform mandatory inspections for fuselage fatigue cracking on 46 of its 737s and is proposing to fine the airline $10.2 million for the violation. These 46 planes amassed 1,451 cycles during the period the airline was in violation. Six of these have now been reported to have actually fatigue cracking in the fuselage. The P.R. war is already in full swing as many media outlets have picked up on this and are accusing the airline of flying "unsafe airplanes." Have fun with that one, Southwest.