Southwest Airlines canceled 300 flights and grounded 81 airplanes for inspection after potential “aircraft skin fatigue” caused a hole to be ripped in the fuselage of a Sacramento-bound Boeing 737 shortly after takeoff from Phoenix.
“Just unreal. All of a sudden there’s like a little explosion. Sounded like an explosion at least. All of a sudden there’s a sunroof in the middle of the plane,” a Flight 812 passenger told KCRA-TV. Passenger Shawna Malvini Redden posted several twitpics of shots from inside the aircraft, and provided a detailed account of her harrowing ordeal on her blog.
Though the plane managed to land safely at Yuma International Airport, the sudden loss of cabin pressure did cause the oxygen masks to drop, and a flight attendant suffered a minor head wound as a result of the pilot’s “rapid, controlled descent” from 36,000 to 11,000 feet.
The FAA and the NTSB are leading the investigation into the incident, with assistance from Boeing.
[reuters / latimes.]
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