Boeing engineer: Cracks in jets not related to heavy use

Associated Press

DALLAS

A senior Boeing engineer said the company was surprised by Friday’s rupture of the roof of a Southwest Airlines Co. jet because Boeing didn’t expect cracking in the aluminum skin of such planes for many more years.

Paul Richter said Tuesday that metal fatigue that led to the hole in the plane’s roof had nothing to do with Southwest’s heavy use of its planes.

Southwest planes make frequent short and medium-length hops. They spend an average of 11.7 hours a day in the air — a full hour more than the airline industry average, according to government figures.

That pattern of use prompted speculation that Southwest’s operations had something to do with tiny cracks’ forming in the aluminum skin of older planes, resulting in the 5-foot tear in the roof of a Southwest plane as it cruised 34,000 feet above Arizona on Friday.

A similar incident happened to a Southwest jet in 2009, and five of Southwest’s other Boeing 737-300 aircraft were found to have tiny cracks after they were grounded this weekend for emergency inspections.

Richter, Boeing’s chief project engineer for models that are no longer in production, told reporters that Southwest was not at fault.

“I think it’s just a statistical event ... far more than it has anything to do with Southwest and how they operate the airplane,” Richter said.