Primer on Airline Fuselage Failures
Primer on Airline Fuselage Failures
This is a short dissertation on fuselage failures in airliner aircraft. Airliners have been experiencing partial or total fuselage failures for a half century, through they are very remote. The first such occurrence of a fuselage failure—a total failure—occurred to a Comet jet produced by Britain's de Havilland corporation. The DH 106 Comet flew its first flight in 1949 and received its Certificate of Airworthiness from Britain in January 1952. The Comet was certified to fly at a maximum of 36,000 feet. It didn't take long for a total fuselage disintegration to occur.
But first, the Comet experienced several accidents due to inadequate power for takeoff and improper pilot performance. Jet operations were in the learning stage at that time.
On January 10, 1954, about half hour after departing Rome's Ciampino Airport, BOAC Flight 781 broke apart and crashed into the Mediterranean near the Italian island of Elba.
The next fuselage disintegration occurred a few months later, on April 8, 1954, when a South African Airways 1 came apart after taking off from Calcutta/Dum Dum Airport and flying at 35,000 feet. The Comet's airworthiness certificate was immediately cancelled and the aircraft extensively redesigned. The problem was eventually traced to metal fatigue which occurred from cyclic expansion and contraction of the fuselage during each flight.
Lessons learned from the fuselage structural problems on the Comet were used to design the Boeing 707 and DC-8 jets. One of those lessons was the design of the windows, where the Comet had square windows with sharp corners. The Comet was reengineered and with th4e Comet 4 in 1958 it became a modestly successful aircraft used by some airlines outside of the United States.
On August 22, 1981, a Far East Air Transport Boeing 737-222, Flight 103, broke apart in flight after departing Taipei Songshan Airport for Kaohsiung. The Republic of China Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that severe metal corrosion led led to the fuselage disintegration.
On April 28, 1988. a Boeing 737-200 of Aloha Airlines experienced a dramatic partial fuselage disintegration while flying at the relatively low altitude of 24,000 feet. A huge section of the upper fuselage completely ripped from the aircraft, from behind the pilot's set and from and floor level on one side to the floor level on thee other side. One flight attendant was blown out of the aircraft. The aircraft conducted a standard emergency descent and landed at Maui. Luckily, only eight of the 65 people suffered serious injuries.
Although a properly functioning FAA with competent management personnel should have made the required decision, it took an act of Congress via the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988 in the wake of the disaster. This provided for stricter research into probable causes of future airplane disasters.
On May 25, 2002, a China Airlines Boeing 747, Flight 611, disintegrated during a flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport to Hong Kong.
On July 13, 2009, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, Flight 2294, had a fuselage rupture the size of a football, 14 x 17 inches, while cruising at 34,000 feet between Nashville, Tennessee and Baltimore, Maryland. There were earlier criticism of the carrier's lax maintenance and inspection practices and FAA inspector laxity.
On April 1, 2011, another Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, Flight 812, cruising at 36,000 feet on a flight between Phoenix and Sacramento, suffered a rupture at the tope of the fuselage that permitted passengers to see blue sky from their seats.
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