Boeing 757 Makes Emergency Landing After Wing Falls Apart Mid Flight

[cbabe]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/boeing-757-makes-emergency-landing-after-wing-falls-apart-mid-flight/ar-BB1iBlu2

Boeing 757 Makes Emergency Landing After Wing Falls Apart Mid Flight

Story by Bill Galluccio • 23h

A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston with 165 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing in Denver after the plane's wing started to fall apart in midair.

When the pilot announced the plane was diverting to Denver, passenger Kevin Clarke looked out the window and saw part of the wing breaking off.

…more… video on x…

[SheilaAnn]

1. Amtrak starting to look like a great alternative if you're not in a rush. n/t

[brooklynite]

39. "A rush" is a relative turn

I'd prefer to get to the west coast in less than three days.

Personally I have no worries about flying (heading to Paris next month).

[Irish_Dem]

2. Jebus H. Christ.

A wing falling off in mid-flight is not a good situation.

[Happy Hoosier]

4. The wing didn't fall off... sensationalistic headline.

Looks like a slat delamination. Not good.... but the airworthiness of the plane was never compromised.

[Irish_Dem]

7. A passenger said he saw part of the wing fall off.

I was once on an airplane when I saw one of the engines on fire.
That didn't inspire a lot of confidence either.

[Happy Hoosier]

9. The slat is technically part of the wing...

And you never want to see a part come of your airplane....

but there is a HUGE difference between a slat and the core of the wing.

The slat being damaged or even complete falling off means performance is a bit restricted, but the core of the wing falling off means airplane falling out of the sky. The pic in the article shows the damage. Not great, but not airworthiness threatening.

[Irish_Dem]

13. I didn't want to see an airplane engine on fire either.

But it still landed with a slew of firetrucks and foam being sprayed everywhere on the landing strip around us.

Half of everything is psychology, and people don't want to see plane parts falling off as they are flying.
Or plane parts on fire.

Civilian passengers don't know the difference between a slat and wing core.
They cannot tell minor from major problems.
It is not a good look for the airlines.

[Happy Hoosier]

15. Fires are ALWAYS airworthiness threatening!

I've seen and experienced some scary stuff over the years (I work in aerospace). But I've never been on a plane that caught fire. I can imagine that was terrifying.

Once I did smell a strong odor of burning right after take-off, and was near panic until the flight attendant announced that they had burned something in the microwave. Yikes!

[Irish_Dem]

19. It was a military aircraft.

My Dad was career USAF, I was a child and the family was flying to our next overseas assignment.
We were flying over the Pacific so nowhere to land quickly.

But there were quite a few military pilots and other aircrew officers flying as passengers with their families.
They all insisted we would be fine. The pilot knew what he was doing, etc.
I could see the look of concern on their faces however.

And I could look out the window and see the engine on fire.
Pilot got on the intercom and said "I don't need that engine."

But you see, I grew up as an AF kid and I knew the USAF aircrews were smart, well trained
and dedicated to keeping people safe. So I had faith in all of them.

Also AF kids are taught not to panic, stay calm in emergencies, follow the rules.

But when we landed on some godforsaken small island finally, the firetrucks, foam being sprayed all over the runway,
was a bit jarring. I think we had to deplane via the emergency chute, I thought this was overly dramatic, but
what do I know.

[Happy Hoosier]

23. Roger that!

Yes, my career has been focused on military aerospace, including lots of flight test. Nothing like trying to pretend an in-flight emergency is not an emergency!

[Irish_Dem]

28. I never forgot the pilot saying "I don't need that engine."

It has stuck with me for some reason.

Many of the pilots and flight crew onboard were WWII, Korean vets headed for Viet Nam.
So they knew the score, but keeping the wives and kids calm.
But heck, maybe the pilot didn't need that engine anyway.

You must have a very interesting career in military aerospace.
I used to know pilots who worked at Edwards, doing the flight testing.
Now that is an interesting bunch of pilots.

[Girard442]

16. Any airframe failure that leaves the airframe visibly damaged is airworthiness threatening.

Without extensive analysis, you can't know exactly what has happened or why and you can't be sure there won't be cascading failures.

[Irish_Dem]

21. Exactly. We don't know if it was related to a sequence of other problems that will get worse.

In a short period of time.

[Happy Hoosier]

24. But a slat isn't part of the airframe.

It doesn't directly affect the airworthiness of the basic aircraft..... unless there was some severe flutter of something like that. Looking at the pictures, it's pretty clear it was caused by the deterioration of the composite laminate. It's an old-ass airplane that the lamination broke down. Most of the skin of the airplane would be aluminum and not affected by the same kind of deterioration, but the entire fleet should be grounded and inspected. These planes are old and that kind of deterioration is age-related.

[Girard442]

31. From the Cornell Law School:

Airframe means the fuselage, booms, nacelles, cowlings, fairings, airfoil surfaces (including rotors but excluding propellers and rotating airfoils of engines), and landing gear of an aircraft and their accessories and controls.

Cribbed directly from the FAA, I'm guessing, but I'm too lazy to pursue it any further.

[Cheezoholic]

42. Yeah, that smells like somebody missed some sort of wear or metal fatigue

on the slat or one of the pieces that join the slat to the wing and allow it to move during during one of the many inspections each year these aircraft are required to go through. FAA and the NTSB will immediately (probably already are) begin going through maintenance logs for this particular aircraft. 99% it's not a fleet wide issue with the 757, one of the best and considered the finest airliners by pilots that have ever flown it. They're working there way out of passenger flight but quite a few are moving over or have moved to cargo along with the 767. I'd lay money this is on United and/or a subcontractor and will be found to be a faulty maintenance procedure.


Boiler Up!

[Tetrachloride]

40. +1. terrible headline. clickbait

[Happy Hoosier]

3. Looks like the slat delaminated.

The newest 757's are now 20 years old. Time to retire these old birds.

OTOH, Trump's plane is a 757, so maybe some good news in there!

[bluesbassman]

5. Was William Shatner on that flight?

?si=SdH5VZCaTZh2oiXs

[doc03]

26. You beat me to it lordy their is video nt

[planetc]

6. I'd pretty much made up my mind not to fly anywhere again, and this confirms my qualms.

I was tired of getting patted down every time I went through security, (if you have a big chunk of titanium embedded in your hip, TSA has to pat you down.) but to have to worry about whether the airplane is a Boeing, that's entirely too much. How many Airbuses are there flying American skies?

[Happy Hoosier]

10. Airbuses have had their problems too....

... but commercial air travel remains the safest way to travel by far.

[JoseBalow]

32. Qantas

[maxsolomon]

12. Note that this plane landed safely.

So did the plane with the blown-out door plug.

[Girard442]

20. Not a good time to be smug.

The plane hadn't reached it's cruising altitude and none of the debris from the blowout hit the tail. Lot of luck involved there.

[maxsolomon]

29. Who's smug?

Yes, the door plug was bad, but the poster is drawing drastic conclusions, like Boeing's planes are falling out of the sky right and left. They aren't.

This incident is more on United's maintenance crew than Boeing - especially if the damage was extant before takeoff.

[SpankMe]

34. It had to be at cruising altitude and speed

DEN is too far away from SFO for the plane not to have been at cruise for some period of time. SAC, LAS and SLC are a lot closer to SFO. If they'd discovered the defect earlier, they'd have landed at one of those.

I'm an aerospace engineer - trust me - the wing wasn't falling apart and the flight was in no danger. Slats (also called Fowler Flaps) are not primary structure.

Looks like some composite structure reached end of life at a bad time. Age, wear-and-tear, water intrusion...lots of reasons this could have gone undetected until sudden failure.

[Warpy]

41. Yes, because the pilot realized he needed to get that plane on the ground ASAP

Note that he realized something odd was going on and knew where to look for it.

It will be interesting to find out just what caused the skin to peel off right there and in that pattern.

[DFW]

17. LOTS !

When I’m in the USA, I usually fly Delta (Despite being Dallas-based, I despise American Airlines).

They fly many A320, A321, A330 and A350. For their Düsseldorf-Atlanta route, when it’s running, they use a 767, but they one or two of their 767s that they completely renovated on the inside, and it was like a flying hotel suite. They had been planning to redo the rest, but I think that plan was put on ice by Covid19. Short of there being a nonstop flight between Düsseldorf and Boston, Washington or Dallas, that route was the closest thing to tailor-made for me there ever was.

[EX500rider]

47. You're in much more danger driving to the airport than you are in any Boeing

Your odds of being in an accident during a flight is one in 1.2 million, and the chance of that being fatal is one in 11 million. Comparatively, your chances of dying in a car crash are over 200,000 times higher, averaging around one in 5,000.

[Attilatheblond]

8. Whoa, deja vu

posted this one earlier today

[maxsolomon]

11. The passenger video of the slat is confusing.

The passenger saw the slat was torn up like that before a cross-country flight and didn't mention it to the crew, but took a video instead?

Or is that a video of the landing in Denver?

Regardless, this is more on United's maintenance than Boeing's assembly plant. That plane is apparently 30-ish years old.

[OAITW r.2.0]

14. Manufacturing or Maintence issue?

If a manufacturing defect, big implications for Boeing. If maintanence, big implications for UA.

[Angleae]

18. The plane is 20 years old, how is this Boeing's problem?

[beaglelover]

22. The 757 is my favority airliner. Flew on it many many times from east to west coast. Love the thrust during takeoff!

REally pushes you back in your seat! But these planes are getting a little long in the tooth for passenger service. Last time I flew in one was with Delta from LAX to BOS and we sat in the front exit row by the big door they use to deplane. The insulation was kind of worn out and there was a lot of really cold air coming in.

[Happy Hoosier]

27. Expensive jet to fly.

It never was as popular as Boeing anticipated because it's pretty expensive to fly. But yeah, it has some powerful engines. It was a cool plane, but probably should be put out to pasture.

[hatrack]

25. Wing "falls apart"?

That would be an extremely rapid emergency landing.

[Torchlight]

30. Kinda glad she talked us into always taking Amtrak when we cross country.

No lines, room to move... heck, room to sprawl. A backpack with our own snacks. It's something we look forward to now that we've sworn off air travel (when practically feasible, 'cause Waldorf and Statler are true absolutists)

[rickford66]

33. 727 is still the safest commercial aircraft ever.

The only crashes or dangerous situations were weather related or pilot error. You lose hydraulics .... you fly it manually. Lose two engines ... it flies in a straight line. One had an engine fall off and the crew only thought it was shut down. You got a flight engineer monitoring and controlling all the systems, not some software that has bugs. At one time there was an avionics update for these, but sadly I guess the airframes are too old and more fuel efficient engines aren't available. I worked on a number of 72 simulators and loved receiving data from the crew, sometimes on cocktail napkins. We called the analog instruments steam gauges as opposed to the glass in the 75's 76's etc.

[musette_sf]

35. One of the passengers posted pics in real time

to the United sub on Reddit.


Things deteriorate:


And deteriorate more:

[Richard D]

43. The Boeing "Dreamliner"

doesn't even let the passengers control the windows for much of the flights.

[Cheezoholic]

45. That looks like they very well could've hit something n/t

[EX500rider]

48. Yeah I suspect a bird strike

[ArkansasDemocrat1]

46. It looks like something punctured the slat which made the holes we see and the slat slowly desintigrated

Which wouldn't be Boeings fault at all

[Richard D]

36. Boeing?

Nope, not going.

[twodogsbarking]

38. And this from a different, also distinguised, DUer.

[link:https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143197726|

[rurallib]

37. I would have had a heart attack if I would have seen that

[Cheezoholic]

44. This thread is funny. Nobody complementing the design of an aircraft the pilots/crew that can safely handle this anomaly

You know why airline tragedies get so much attention? Because they very rarely happen. That says something to me. Just driving my car 5 miles I can come back nearly every time with an I almost hit, or someone almost hit, or I saw some idiot driving like, well you get it.

I've been on well over 300 flights. I've been on a flight that lost an engine. I've been on a flight that tried to land in a 45 mph cross wind and did the miss 3 approaches you divert to another airport rule. I've been on flights that have a technical or mechanical issue and hear people bitch. Whats up with that? The flight computer went out but hey pilot take off anyway? I always sit in the back because its usually less crowded and was on a flight that we had a tail strike. Boy I felt it lol. They flew around landed and we got on a different airplane.

I've got all kinds of stories about issues with the aircraft but most are BEFORE we left the gate. Fine with me man. You want to know what really scares me? People in 2 ton vehicles traveling at 65mph head on at each other with only 2 to 3 feet between them. And the Blue Angels think they fly close lol.

It is still the safest mode of travel