Although now equipped with winglets, this is the aircraft as it appeared landing in Cleveland in 2008. Photo: Ed Jones - OPShots.net
(CNN) — Southwest Airlines announced Saturday that it is grounding 79 planes for inspection following an incident in which one of its flights was forced to make an emergency landing after a 3-foot hole tore open in the fuselage of the plane.
The plane managed to land safely at a military base in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday, where authorities “discovered a hole in the top of the aircraft,” the company said earlier.
Investigators are trying to determine what caused the “depressurization event” and have “decided to keep a subset of its Boeing 737 fleet out of the flying schedule to begin an aggressive inspection effort in cooperation with Boeing engineers,” according to a company statement.
via Southwest to ground 79 planes after hole prompts emergency landing – CNN.com.
