Hole in American Airlines plane caused cabin decompression, emergency landing

[TheViper]

It's harrowing enough when a commercial airliner mistakenly announces an emergency landing over water -- or, for that matter, when air passengers capture footage of an actual emergency landing on their cell phones. But passengers on a recent American Airlines flight from Miami to Boston experienced a much more vivid sense of airborne peril when a 2-foot hole opened up in the plane's fuselage about 30 minutes after takeoff.

The Boeing 757 was cruising at 31,000 feet Tuesday when the cabin began to decompress rapidly -- a "super-terrifying" experience, a passenger told WSVN-TV in Miami. The flight was carrying 154 passengers and six crew members.

But soon enough, the crew established emergency procedures: The passengers donned the oxygen masks that drop down when cabin pressure decreases, and the pilots were able to reverse the flight and land the damaged plane safely at Miami International Airport.

"The crew declared an emergency and made a normal landing. There were no injuries," American Airlines said in a rather terse statement. "The aircraft has been taken out of service."

Once the plane was on the ground, inspectors discovered the problem -- not that it was exactly easy to miss. A 2-foot-by-1-foot hole had opened just above the "A" of the logo near the plane's front left cabin door. Initial reports indicate that the plane probably took off with a smaller crack in the fuselage -- and that wind pressure caused it to expand after the jet's takeoff. However, investigators say that they have yet to isolate the precise cause of the hole. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "industry officials said the incident ... bears some similarity to cracks found last month in the fuselage" of a United Airlines Boeing 757. A 1-foot hole also opened up on Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 when it was 30,000 feet in the air last year, causing pressure to drop and oxygen masks to be deployed, the Journal says.

Boeing has yet to provide a statement on the matter and did not immediately respond to The Upshot's request for comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101029/bs_yblog_upshot/hole-in-american-airlines-plane-caused-cabin-decompression-emergency-landing