WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- U.S. investigators are blaming a "fatigue crack" for a rupture that forced a Baltimore-bound Boeing 737 into an emergency landing last summer.
A hole the size of a football appeared in the Southwest Airlines plane during a flight from Nashville to Baltimore on July 13, 2009. The cabin lost pressure, and the jet made an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va. No one aboard was hurt.
The National Transportation Safety Board reported Thursday that the nearly 14-inch crack had been growing under the plane's aluminum skin before the hole opened, the Dallas Morning News reported. The NTSB didn't determine how the crack started or why it suddenly opened. It said Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration both had called for more frequent inspections of the area.
The NTSB report also didn't say whether later inspections found other aircraft with the same problem. The jet had been flown by Southwest since 1994, the newspaper said.
The Dallas-based airline stated in a blog posting Thursday that it has learned from the incident and has stepped up maintenance.
