Southwest Airlines Grounds 80 Boeing 737-300's after Skin Failure

In response to the initial incident of a Boeing 737-300 which had a piece of the aircraft’s skin rip off while in flight, Southwest Airlines has grounded 80 of their 737-300′s from a total of the 170 they have in operation. The reason they have not grounded their entire fleet of similar aircraft is because some of the 737-300′s have had recent overhauls and were not deemed at risk of a similar occurrence. This is the second incident of a hole developing in a Southwest Aircraft while in flight during the last two years. The last incident was in 2009 when a small hole developed in the fuselage of another one of the company’s 737-300′s, resulting in the depressurization of the cabin. The aircraft involved in the current incident received a thorough inspection and overhaul just over a year ago, which should have revealed any issues that would have resulted in this type of accident.

There is some speculation by certain individuals that Southwest Airlines has an issue when it comes to maintaining these aircraft and the FAA seems to be lacking in their ability to prevent this type of problem. After the similar incident back in 2009 Southwest Airlines developed a new inspection plan to catch this type of problem before it turned into an accident.

The FAA approved this new inspection plan and they were responsible for oversight of the inspections and results. There are certainly more questions than answers when it comes to this sort of incident because it may never be know exactly why this happened. The alarming fact is that the increased inspections by Southwest Airlines professionals were in place to prevent this exact type of accident from occurring again.

There are currently over 900 of the Boeing 737-300 aircraft in operation all over the world. None of the other airlines that operate this aircraft have had similar issues in recent years, which begs the question of whether or not this is an issue with Southwest Airlines specifically. They have come under fire for previously missing inspections to identify cracks in the fuselage of other aircraft. This was escalated to a lawsuit, which Southwest Airlines ended up settling for $7.5 million back in early 2009.

Hopefully, this will provide the company with the initiative to step up safety and maintenance procedures. With the technology and materials available in today’s world of aviation there is no excuse for this type of incident to occur on multiple occasions with the same airline.