Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a "probable cause" report on the American Airlines flight that had a hole rupture in its fuselage mid-flight in October 2010.
The board said the fatigue failure was due to incorrect manufacturing of the crown skin panel on the Boeing 757. Here's an excerpt from the report:
"During its investigation, the NTSB learned of a United Airlines 757 and a second American Airlines 757 that exhibited cracking in the fuselage skin similar to the accident airplane; both had nonconforming thickness at the base of the chemically milled step at the stringer location specified in the SB. Records of manufacture for the skin panels on the accident airplane and the other airplanes with fuselage skin cracking were not retained, and were not required to be retained; therefore, a cause for the manufacturing nonconformance could not be identified.
"The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
"Fatigue failure of the fuselage crown skin due to incorrect manufacturing of the crown skin panel that resulted in a skin thickness less than the manufacturer-specified thickness."
On October 26, American Airlines flight 1640 was heading from Miami to Boston when a rapid decompression occurred 16 minutes into the flight. The crew declared an emergency and returned to Miami. No one was injured in the incident.
No comments:
Post a Comment