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Hole In Fuselage
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IMAGE SOURCE: Twitter/ Hole in SW Jet/ passenger: John Rhodes
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It doesn’t happen every day-thankfully.
A hole opened up in a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 last night during a flight from Nashville to Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The one-by-one foot hole appeared in the rear of the plane near the jet’s tail about an hour after the 4 p.m. departure. Flight 2294 was diverted to West Virginia where it made an emergency landing.
The cabin lost pressure and oxygen masks were deployed, reports the Washington Post.
Passenger Michael Cunningham said he was sleeping when “All of a sudden, the loudest noise I ever heard came out of nowhere”. He described it as a loud roar. When he woke up he saw “sky where I shouldn’t be seeing it”.
The pilot began taking the plane to a lower altitude where it landed safely in Charleston, West Virginia. Afterward the passengers applauded and hugged the pilot. No injuries were reported among the 126 passengers and the passengers shared a pizza in the terminal while waiting about two hours for Southwest to send a replacement plane.
The Federal Aviation Administration sent investigators to examine the gash. Southwest tells AP it will investigate all 187 of the 737-300 jets in its fleet to try and determine whether the material tore or two panels separated to cause the rupture. Air traffic on Southwest will not be interrupted, says the airline.
Forbes reports that traffic for Southwest Airlines fell in June by 2.1 percent, which was a smaller decline than a month before, while the load factor rose 1.3 percent.
The Department of Transportation reported on Friday that Southwest Airlines ranked number one for the fewest passenger complaints. #