Rapid descent of damaged plane recalled

PHOENIX -- Flight attendants had begun to take drink orders when a loud boom rocked the cabin.

Aboard Southwest Flight 812, Shawna Malvini Redden covered her ears, then felt a brisk wind rush by. Oxygen masks fell, the cabin lost pressure, and Redden fumbled to maneuver the mask in place.

Then she prayed. And she reached out to the stranger seated next to her in Row 8 as the pilot of the damaged aircraft began a rapid descent from some 34,400 feet in the sky.

"I don't know this dude, but I was like, 'I'm going to just hold your hand,' " the 28-year-old doctoral student at Arizona State University recalled Saturday, a day after her Phoenix-to-Sacramento flight was forced into an emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, Ariz., with a gaping hole in its fuselage.

No serious injuries were reported among the 118 passengers and five crew members aboard, according to Southwest.

What caused the part of the fuselage to rupture on the 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 was a mystery, and investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived in Yuma Saturday to begin an inquiry.

Southwest, meanwhile, grounded about 80 similar planes in its fleet for inspections, and said that some 300 flights likely would be canceled Saturday because of the reduced fleet.

Southwest operates about 170 of the 737-300s in its fleet of about 540 planes, but it replaced the aluminum skin on many of the 300s in recent years, spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said. The planes that were grounded Saturday have not had their skin replaced, she said.

Julie O'Donnell, an aviation safety spokeswoman for Seattle-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes, confirmed "a hole in the fuselage and a depressurization event" in the latest incident, but she declined to speculate on what caused it.

There are a total of 288 Boeing 737-300s currently operating in the U.S. fleet, and 931 operate worldwide, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. "The FAA is working closely with the NTSB, Southwest Airlines and Boeing to determine what actions may be necessary," the FAA said in a statement released Saturday.

Southwest officials said the plane in Friday's flight had undergone all inspections required by the FAA. They said the plane was given a routine inspection on Tuesday and underwent its last extensive overhaul in March 2010.

There was "never any danger that the plane would fall out of the sky," said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member. "However, anybody on that airplane with any sort of respiratory problems certainly was at risk."

But a similar incident happened in July 2009 when a football-sized hole opened up in flight in the fuselage of another Southwest 737, depressurizing the cabin. That plane made an emergency landing and was later determined to have a hole caused by metal fatigue.

Southwest and the FAA reached a deal listing steps the airline would take to prevent another such episode, Goglia said. The details of that agreement are considered proprietary and haven't been made public, he said.

The latest incident "certainly makes me think there is something wrong with the maintenance system at Southwest, and it makes me think there is something wrong with the [FAA] principal maintenance inspector down there that after that big event they weren't watching this more closely," Goglia said.

As for Friday's flight, there was obvious relief when it touched down safely. And when the pilot emerged after the landing, the atmosphere turned celebratory, Redden said.

"When the pilot came out a little bit later to look at the damage, we clapped and cheered. If overhead bins weren't in the way, I'm pretty sure we would've given him a standing ovation," she said.