Southwest Airlines to step up inspections as signs of metal fatigue discovered
Washington/Dallas/Wilmington— Southwest Airlines will step up inspections on its jet fleet after investigators said they discovered evidence of metal fatigue on an engine that exploded on Tuesday, sending shrapnel into the plane and killing a passenger seated near a window. The woman was partly sucked out of the plane carrying 149 people as it flew about 32,500 feet above Pennsylvania, according to passenger accounts and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The death was the first fatality on a US-registered airline in more than nine years. The plane, a Boeing 737-700 bound for Dallas from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport shortly after 11am on Tuesday. NTSB investigators found indications of metal fatigue, an area of weakness caused by repeated bending, where a fan blade on the engine was missing, NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt said in a briefing on Tuesday night. Sumwalt cautioned that the information was prelimina...
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