Plane continued climbing despite pressure loss

Press, 29 December 1988, Page 10

Plane continued climbing despite pressure loss

NZPA-Reuter Washington Crew members of an Eastern Airlines jetliner that made an emergency landing at Charleston, West Virginia continued climbing the plane to cruising altitude in spite of noticing a loss of cabin pressure, United States federal investigators reported yesterday. Then from 9450 m the Boeing 727 dived 5450 m in two minutes after air rushed out of a 25cm by 50cm tear in the plane’s outer skin. The hole was in the upper left side of the fuselage near the tail. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman, Ted Lopatkiewicz

said crew members told investigators that after takeoff they noticed a problem with cabin pressure but that at 10,000 m they felt they had stabilised it.

A crew member checked the door seals, which can sometimes cause a loss of air pressure, but found no problem, he said. Mr Lopatkiewicz said the torn skin had remained attached to the plane. “We have removed it and are bringing it to Washington to investigate in our laboratory. That skin is newer than the aircraft itself. It had been

replaced at least once before. The plane itself is 22 years old,” The airliner had made five other unscheduled landings in the past five years, but the plane’s structure had not broken open before and the history of problems was about average, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, Fred Farrar, said. He said the other problems were not emergencies. The airliner, flying from Rochester, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, made an emergency landing at Charleston, West Virginia. None of the 110

people on board was injured. Mr Farrar said the only other structural problem the plane had suffered was a pressure leak in a galley door that required the plane to make an unscheduled landing in New Orleans in 1986. He said the plane also made unscheduled landings for an oil loss in one of the engines, an engine compressor stall, failure of the main landing gear to retract and two hydraulic problems, neither involving hydraulic failure. “It looks about average to me for a five-year period,” Mr Farrar told Reuters.