Aloha Airlines Flight 243

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Aloha Flight 243

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 at Kahului Airport on April 28, 1988, after its fuselage was ripped apart during the flight.
Summary
Date   April 28, 1988
Type   Maintenance related fatigue failure along lap joint S-10L,
explosive decompression
Site   Kahului, Hawaii
Fatalities   1
Injuries   65
Aircraft
Aircraft type   Boeing 737-200
Operator   Aloha Airlines
Tail number   N73711
Passengers   89
Crew   5
Survivors   93

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a scheduled Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, the aircraft suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, but was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. One crew member was blown out of the airplane and another 65 passengers and crew were injured. The extent of the damage was only just below that which would have caused the airliner to break up, and the survival of the aircraft with such a major loss of integrity was unprecedented and remains unsurpassed.

Contents

[edit] Details

On April 28, 1988, the aircraft (registration number N73711) took off from Hilo International Airport at 13:25 HST bound for Honolulu. There were 89 passengers and five crew members on board. No unusual occurrences were reported during the takeoff and climb.

Around 13:48, as the aircraft reached its normal flight altitude of 24,000 feet (7,300 m) about 23 nautical miles (43 km) south-southeast of Kahului, a small section on the left side of the roof ruptured. The resulting explosive decompression tore off a large section of the roof, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area.

Part of the design of the 737 was for stress to be alleviated by controlled area breakaway zones. The intent was to provide controlled depressurization that would maintain the integrity of the fuselage structure. The age of the plane and the condition of the fuselage (that had corroded away and stressed the rivets beyond their designed capacity) appear to have conspired to render the design a part of the problem; when that first controlled area broke away, according to the small rupture theory, the rapid sequence of events resulted in the failure sequence. This has been referred to as a "zipper effect."

First Officer Madeline "Mimi" Tompkins' head was jerked back during the explosion, and she saw cabin insulation flying around the cockpit. Captain Robert Schornsteimer looked back and saw blue sky where the first class cabin's roof had been. Tompkins immediately contacted Kahului Airport on Maui to declare an emergency.

At the time of the decompression, the chief flight attendant, Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, was standing at seat row 5 collecting drinks cups from passengers. According to passengers' accounts, Lansing was ejected through a hole in the side of the airplane.

Flight attendant Michelle Honda, who was standing near rows #15 and #16, was thrown violently to the floor during the decompression. Despite her injuries, she was able to crawl up and down the aisle to assist and calm the terrified passengers. Flight attendant Jane Sato-Tomita, who was at the front of the plane, was seriously injured by flying debris, and was thrown to the floor. Passengers held onto her during the descent into Maui.

The crew performed an emergency landing on Kahului Airport's runway 2 at 13:58. In all, 65 people were reported injured, eight seriously. The aircraft was a write-off.[1] What could have been a major disaster ended with just one death; the rest of the crew and passengers survived. This seems to have been in doubt on the ground, as the tower asked by radio at one point:

"Aloha 243, are you still up?" [2]

[edit] Aftermath

After the accident, a full-scale investigation was launched by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion [3] (the plane operated in a salt water environment). The root cause of the problem was failure of an epoxy adhesive to bond the aluminium sheets of the fuselage together when the B737 was manufactured. Where it failed to bond the two surfaces together, water could enter the gap and start the corrosion process. Since the corrosion products have a larger volume than the underlying metal, the two sheets were forced apart, putting extra stress on the rivets also used to hold them together. The age of the aircraft became a key issue (it was 19 years old at the time of the accident and had sustained a remarkable number of takeoff-landing cycles — 89,090, well beyond the 75,000 trips it was designed to sustain). Consequently, all major United States air carriers decided to retire their oldest aircraft to prevent a recurrence. Aircraft now receive additional maintenance checks as they age. However, several other aircraft operating under similar environments did not present the same phenomenon. A deep and thorough inspection of Aloha Airlines by NTSB revealed that the most extensive and longer "Check D" was performed in several early morning instalments, instead of a full uninterrupted maintenance procedure. They also found that eddy-current testing inspections on the fuselage skin, as prescribed by Boeing, had not been performed.[citation needed]

According to the official NTSB report of the investigation, a passenger noticed a crack in the fuselage upon boarding the aircraft prior to the ill-fated flight but did not notify anyone. The crack was located aft of the front portside passenger door. This crack was probably due to metal fatigue related to the 89,090 compression and decompression cycles experienced in the short hop flights by Aloha, which was the second highest number of cycles in the worldwide fleet of 737s at the time.

In addition, Congress passed the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988 in the wake of the disaster. This provided for stricter research into probable causes of future airplane disasters.

Both pilots remained with Aloha Airlines. Robert Schornsteimer retired from Aloha Airlines in August, 2005. At that time, Madeline Tompkins was still a Captain of the airline's Boeing 737-700 aircraft.

For many years afterwards, during Boeing Operators Conferences, there was a running joke about referring to Aloha as the "Convertible Plane Airline", much to the dismay of its representatives.


[edit] Relics of the plane

Due to the plane's state, the airframe was scrapped by a Maui metal recycler after transport through Kahului. A belt buckle from the scrapped plane now resides, along with a photo of the plane in the scrapyard, at the Paper Airplane Museum in the Maui Mall.

[edit] Dramatizations and memorials

  • The TV movie Miracle Landing is based on the incident.
  • The TV series Air Crash Investigation reviewed the circumstances of the incident. The episode contained historical footage, recreations of what happened, and interviews with investigators and survivors.
  • In 1996, the Lansing Memorial Garden was inaugurated at Honolulu International Airport's Interisland Terminal near the gates used by Aloha Airlines.
  • The plot of the novel Airframe references the incident.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ National Transportation Safety Board (1989). Excerpts from "Aircraft Accident Report- Aloha Airlines, flight 243, Boeing 737-200,- N73711, near Maui, Hawaii- April 28, 1988. Retrieved on 22 December, 2005.
  2. ^ Macarthur Job (1996). Air Disaster, vol. 2. Australian Aviation, 158. ISBN 1-875671-19-6.
  3. ^ The Aloha incident. Retrieved on 17 August, 2006.

[edit] External links

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