It now seems that reports are confirming that a Southwest Airlines plane has just recently been given a scare. This happened after a hole blew opening the top of the aircraft mid-flight. Due to this, the pilot of the plane was forced to start an emergency descent to 11,000 feet. The pilot preformed this emergency descent in order to create some breathable air pressure inside the cabin.

Reports go on to show that this little scare happened at 33,000 feet over Arizona on April 1. During the flight, a 6 foot long skin panel in the ceiling of the Boeing 737 plane ruptured. This, of course, forced the cabin of the plane to become depressurized.

According to Southwest Airlines, there were some 118 people on the plane at the time of the event. When the aircraft lost pressure, the emergency oxygen masks did deploy for the passengers. Despite all of this, the pilot was able to land the plane safely in Yuma, Arizona.

The only good news to come out of this was that no major injuries were reported. However, one flight attendant did have to be treated at the airport for some very minor injuries, but no one was taken to the hospital.

Now Southwest Airlines said that they, along with the help of Boeing, will start a new inspection program for its Boeing 737 planes. This new inspection will be started to check the airline’s planes for signs of metal fatigue. Of course, the goal here would be to find cracks and other signs of metal fatigue before it turns into a problem like what happened on this flight. The full details of this new program have not been given out yet.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 9:55 am and is filed under Travel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.