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Just not Southwest's week...

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MacGyverS2000

MacGyverS2000

Electrical
Dec 22, 2003
8,504
And I'll be flying SW in a few months...


Dan - Owner
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Pffff, barely even news and definitely not an engineering failure. You might be shocked how many times an airliner has a plane out of service for a windshield crack. Again, a non-issue as those windows are 5 layers thick if I understand correctly. However, any crack in a window usually requires a precautionary landing.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries
 
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"However, any crack in a window usually requires a precautionary landing."

Probably more for passenger confidence than anything else.
 
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No, even side cockpit windows require a diversion from what I can tell. I believe the danger being that if cracked it no longer has the impact resistance (ice, birds, fan blades) required to warrant continued flight beyond the first, safe landing spot.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries
 
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I, for one, would certainly like to know what stresses are involved that would suddenly crack an entire window during flight to the point of half of it falling out...

Dan - Owner
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The remaining window fragment had what looked like a lot of surface defects. I wonder if someone used an incompatible cleaner and damaged it. A project I was very slightly involved with had a polycarbonate window for shrapnel resistance that was reported to be cracking around every retaining bolt. Turned out someone decided that gasoline would be the best to clean off whatever was on there; the gasoline collected under the bolt heads, where it could not drain out, and did it's work. If a similar process was used, the damaging liquid could be captured in any gap with the external seal and cause a stress concentration at the edge that could progress across the other surface damage.

That has got to have been a high-pucker event when the nearby passengers began putting together what would happen if the inner panel had also failed (not the one with the little hole, I think) considering the last window-loss result. It's small wonder that the pilot put it on the ground ASAP.
 
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"...even side cockpit windows require a diversion from what I can tell. I believe the danger being that if cracked it no longer has the impact resistance (ice, birds, fan blades) required to warrant continued flight beyond the first, safe landing spot."

The way the story was written (for some reason the pictures didn't show up the first time I looked at it) they made it sound as if it was a minor crack in a window in the main cabin (the story mentions the captain coming out of the cockpit to look at it), which would seem to be less of safety hazard than making an unscheduled landing. For that situation, the diversion and landing would seem to be more to keep the passengers from freaking out. Now that I see the pictures, it looks much more serious, and I agree grounding the plane was likely warranted from a safety standpoint.
 
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In the next generation of airliners maybe they take out the passenger windows, just leaving the required number of opaque emergency exits with little peepholes like the main doors.

"Schiefgehen wird, was schiefgehen kann" - das Murphygesetz
 
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The passenger windows in the Bombardier CSeries are substantially larger than the typical portholes in a 737. Airliners will have this kind of problem for a while yet, I'd say.
Condensation of moisture between the panes would explain the speckled pattern in the photos above. The water could freeze between the panes, and depending on the flow of air seeping through the crack the distribution of condensation would not necessarily be even.
Still, I think IRStuff could be right about a portion of the pane being missing. If that's what it looked like when seen in person, then yea, serious pucker-factor.

STF
 
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"In the next generation of airliners maybe they take out the passenger windows"

Actually, the next generation is that, except they'll have cameras on the skin which project onto a display on the inner surface of the plane; you'll basically feel like you're in a glass airplane, so no one can hog the window. Fear of flying will require sedation the entire flight.

153c557f1fbadb1995ed35e80e1241f1.jpg


TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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It would bring back that old George Carlin comment about flying: "No, I don't want to get ON the airplane, I want to get IN the airplane."

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Good grief, I hope they never turn the inner skin into a giant video display. You know it would be nothing but advertising. At least a window can have the shade pulled down if you want to block the sun but if it's all a giant video I doubt the passengers will have an on/off switch. The planes with a display in the back of each seat can be turned off but every time there is an announcement they turn back on, makes me want to take a hammer to them.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
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Some research outfit in the UK is working on a windowless aircraft.

Standard Windows have to be carefully engineered ( Google 'comet aircraft disaster')

So in simple terms an air aft with no passenger Windows would be stronger.
 
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Article said:
It is just the latest in several incidents involving a Southwest Airlines plane.
Click to expand...

I love how all aviation articles insist on noting similar accidents or something along those lines. As if Southwest is somehow less safe than others because of this spree of unrelated accidents or has anything to do with a truck ramming a moving airplane. I wish I could find the example but I remember one article digging back something like 20 years to find a similar incident to quote to sell some narrative to their readers.

Heck, I'm surprised they didn't put the ever-present line of whether or not the plane was on a flightplan.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries
 
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There was that spat of articles awhile back about pets dying on United flights. The media played that United theme for a bit.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Well, Southwest is back in the news:

Southwest Airlines flight makes emergency landing leaving passengers fearing for their lives in THIRD safety crisis in a month

Oxygen masks were deployed when flight 861 from Denver to Dallas suddenly lost cabin pressure at '20,000 ft' on Saturday night


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Well, now that's interesting. Depends on what/where the failure was but having both a window failure and a cabin pressure loss this close together could be indicative of something wrong with their maintenance or the planes if they share a commonality.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries
 
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