Southwest Airlines inspects 200 Boeing 737-300 planes after flight 2294 forcelands

Southwest Airlines, the budget airline based in Dallas, Texas, the United States, inspected 200 of its Boeing 737-300 aircraft across the United States overnight.The inspection was undertaken after a hole appeared in the passenger cabin of one of the planes during a flight that led to an emergency landing. 

The square-shaped hole, measuring 1 foot (30 centimetres x 30 centimetres), appeared as Southwest Airlines’ Boeing 737-300 plane was flying from Nashville in Tennessee to Baltimore in Maryland, at an altitude of around 30,000 feet, on July 13, 2009.

US media reports quoted a passenger on Flight 2294 as saying that he heard a loud roar, looked up and saw the hole, which was close to his head. The plane, he added, was about 30 minutes into the flight from Nashville to Baltimore when it happened. 

The passengers, who remained calm, were asked to put on oxygen masks.

The plane – with 131 passengers and crew aboard – then made an emergency landing in Charleston in West Virginia. No one was injured in the incident.

BBC quoted a passenger of the affected plane as saying: “After the landing, the pilot came out and looked up through the hole. Everyone applauded him, some shook his hand, and a few others hugged him.”

The cause for the formation of the hole in the passenger cabin of the 15-year-old plane is yet to be determined. 

Officials from the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Boeing Company are investigating the incident.

A spokesman of the Federal Aviation Administration was quoted as commenting that Southwest Airlines was “being prudent” in inspecting its planes soon after the incident. The exact cause could be determined only after sophisticated analysis, he added.

A spokesman for Southwest Airlines said that no similar problem was found in the airline’s 200 Boeing 737-300 aircraft that were inspected across the United States. 

Southwest Airlines is operating its normal schedule of flights.

In March 2009, the Federal Aviation Administration had ordered Southwest Airlines to pay a fine of $7.5 million for having committed a series of safety violations in which the airline’s planes were flying with “undiagnosed fatigue cracks.”

It was found in March 2008 that Southwest Airlines had flown 46 airplanes a total of nearly 60,000 flights without required checks for cracks on fuselage.

Small fractures were detected on a number of the planes that Southwest Airlines operates.

The probe also revealed efforts by managers at the Federal Aviation Administration to suppress reports of maintenance setbacks at Southwest Airlines.