Southwest Airlines jet on April 1, 2011. (NTSB)
The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that poor manufacturing led to the metal fatigue and subsequent roof hole that opened up on a Southwest Airlines airplane in 2011.
The board, in an accident brief issued last week, said that it "determines that the probable cause of this accident was the improper installation of the fuselage crown skin panel at the S-4L lap joint during the manufacturing process, which resulted in multiple site damage fatigue cracking and eventual failure of the lower skin panel."
The accident occurred April 1, 2011, on a flight from Phoenix that was headed to Sacramento. The Boeing 737-300 airplane suffered a rapid decompression as it was climbing through 34,000 feet.
The pilots quickly brought the airplane to a lower altitude - down to 11,000 feet in five minutes - and then landed the airplane in Yuma, Ariz.
The NTSB said the airplane had a section about 60 inches long by eight inches wide that "had fractured and flapped open on the upper left side above the wing."
In short, the NTSB investigation blamed sloppy work (our phrase, not the NTSB's) for the metal fatigue. The NTSB's wording was that the manufacturing "showed a lack of attention to detail and extremely poor manufacturing technique."
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