 |
On April 28, 1988, an Aloha Airline Boeing 737 lost a major portion of its
upper fuselage while in flight at 24,000 feet.1 The pilot was successful at
landing the aircraft without any additional catastrophic damage to the structure
of the plane. The fuselage panels that are joined together along lap joints using
rivets were corroded resulting in cracking and debonding over the life of the aircraft
(in this case 19 years). As a result, structural failure of the fuselage occurred
in mid-flight due to corrosion-accelerated fatigue.1,2 1http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/ 2http://www.corrosion-doctors.org |